


Forever Is Who We Are

by Rens_Knight



Series: In the Burning of the Light [9]
Category: Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic
Genre: F/M, Gen, Literature, Sci-Fi, fan fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-12
Updated: 2017-11-12
Packaged: 2018-10-23 04:34:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 26,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10712286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rens_Knight/pseuds/Rens_Knight
Summary: Tarssus Kallig has ended Darth Thanaton's ritual Kaggath challenge against him--and with that victory has come a new name and new responsibilities.But whether he is called Lord Kallig or Darth Imperius, the young man that some refer to as the Master of the Dead has not forgotten how to feel, how to love.And with that comes the ability to feel loss.





	1. Master of the Dead

**Author's Note:**

> This story takes place about a month after the conclusion of Thanaton's Kaggath against Lord Kallig, and Kallig's accession to the Dark Council.

  
**Star Wars: The Old Republic  
** In the Burning of the Light  
**  
"Forever Is Who We Are"  
Part 1: Master of the Dead**

It is said about the Sith Order that to us there is no greater enemy than death itself, which some regard as the very antithesis of the Force we wield.  I cannot entirely disagree, for there is a strong sense of something disturbing, something corrupt in the process of dying, something that runs counter to every instinct: to survive, to love, to create beauty out of disparate things...all of these suffer a constant attack from the forces of mortality.  There _is_ something hateful and cold in the ravages of death upon living things.  This I cannot deny, for to do so would be to deny that there is something precious, something worth defending, in life.

And yet I cannot help but feel that the lengths to which some Sith are willing to go to evade our mortal nature are even _more_ repugnant than death itself, for in their pursuit, some Sith--Darth Zash, for one--are willing to undertake rituals so abhorrent, so offensive to the dignity of the soul, that they engender but a mockery of life, something that desperately feigns intrinsic worth but is in fact as hollow as an empty skull.

As for myself, yes...it is true I had my body rebuilt by the Rakata construct when I fell ill, but I forbade the device to go so far as to erase my mortality or redefine my essential humanity.  I can channel greater amounts of the Force, and certain other types of energy than most humanoids, yes...but _I remain myself_.  Beyond that--I shall not go.

Perhaps the reason some in the Order fear death to the extent of pursuing immortality at any cost is this one stark fact: that death shall prove us all equal in the end.  Slave--lord--death would show no regard for whichever of those I might be at its appointed moment.  And at that point, I shall be commanded by this thing driven into nature itself to relinquish all that I have fashioned and to acknowledge that my power has come to an end and my legacy must take wing by its own strength.  And all I shall be able to do then...is _trust_.  Trust that there is something worth desiring beyond the Jedi oblivion or some futile attempt to cling ever longer to this type of existence, where decay itself points the arrow of time.

There are some who have called me the Master of the Dead.  And there _is_ reason for that, of course: I am the Force-walker who draws the focus of spirits merely by moving about, and has bound ghosts and channeled their power through my mind and body.  How is it that I could possibly be afflicted by any sort of doubt, that one who has seen, felt, and done the things that I have, could still have to leave anything to trust?

But you see...even my sight beyond the grave has limits set somewhere far beyond my control.  There _are_ still mysteries in death for me--things I must accept merely because I am _told_ , that I will never be able to prove for myself so long as I still live.  Things without which I could imagine nothing more hellish than the life beyond life with which I am well acquainted.  Things...which force me to mourn just the same as any sentient being at the irreparable nature of death and loss.

I am Darth Imperius, Councillor of the Sphere of Ancient Knowledge, heir of Aloysius Kallig and Tulak Hord, Master of the Dead.

And I grieve.

 

"You don't have to do this," I told Ashara and Talos, who had come to visit me in my quarters aboard the _Fury_.  "I'm not ordering you.  And I wouldn't ask."

Talos Drellik, for his part, would brook no further denial.  "It's not a bother at all!" he quickly insisted.

"I appreciate your offer to help with the...official things," I began.  

How I hated that: cherished memories reduced to nothing but a set of boxes to tick and forms to sign, none of which I had ever had to deal with in my life.  Was that a blessing somehow, to have so few attachments to require my attention?  No.  No, of course not.  But I _had_ been fortunate enough to have known from the beginning just how much those attachments meant to me, and why I _could not_ walk away from my obligations like so many Sith and Jedi, each for their own disparate reasons, had done.  Or my love.  

"And I appreciate your willingness to assist me with the other request," I continued, "the one from the Emperor's Wrath.  But I would never require any of it, let alone for you to take part in the rituals.  I understand that Moff Drellik _is_ still your father, and I wouldn't want to put you in a position that might feel disloyal in any way."

My older brother regarded me for a moment with gentle green eyes.  Then he shook his head.  "He and I have had our occasional differences," Talos admitted, "and the odd shouting match here and there--but that doesn't mean that _gaining_ you as family means _losing_ him or anyone else I already had.  I know I never met your father, but he _did_ still become kin to me after a fashion.  I don't want to _only_ help you settle his affairs.  I want to be there _as your brother_.  There are certain duties that exist for extremely good reasons, that mean far more than simply upholding tradition.  This one...it's simply _right_ for family to come together at a time like this."

Pain flickered briefly in the archaeologist's eyes.  In the instant before he extinguished it, I couldn't help but recall why: it would likely take a threat in my capacity as a Dark Councillor to force his biological brother, Typhon, to attend to Moff Drellik in the event of _his_ passing...and that a move I might not even be able to make, given the offense Darth Marr would likely take at any meddling with those who fell under his Sphere.  And even if I succeeded, the man who might return to the Drellik estate...I had no personal knowledge of Lord Typhon Drellik, but there was no guarantee he would be the sort of Sith capable of offering anything like the love of a son and a brother by this point.

 _Don't focus on what you_ don't _have_.  How I recalled the sound of the words, as clear as the burning light of the day on Dromund Fels, the remembered voice unmistakable.  _Focus on everything you_ do _have.  And I have you, Tarssus.  I still have you_.

My shoulders sagged.  Easier said than done.  Still I lifted my eyes back up from the deck and back onto Talos' face.  "I really do appreciate it, Talos.  You do me honor."

Talos' fingers rested softly on my sleeve for a moment as he finished with compassionate simplicity, "I am so sorry for your loss.  Do let me know at once if you think of anything else I can do."  He omitted the formal 'my lord,' an omission I could not have been more grateful for in that moment.  Then he turned for the door, leaving me on my own with Ashara.

"Are you sure you're all right with this?"  I searched Ashara's gaze; even with her strong connection to the Force, there was only so much I could do about the veil that had always shrouded my senses of the living mind.  "I know this runs counter to everything you were taught."  And as much as I longed--especially now--for the process to accelerate, I knew that all the rest of that Jedi indoctrination would have to crumble away in its own time, as she...and _only_ she...learnt to embrace the fullness of life and the Force.  I couldn't push...even though I could hardly have been more desperate to have her fully and completely at my side as now, not just as lover and apprentice, but as wife and Sith compatriot.

Ashara sighed--not exasperation, but rather, I suspect, she felt the weight on me through the Force more acutely than I ever would have been capable of sensing from her.  She stared into the inscrutable distance for a moment, then returned herself to me.  "Look...Tarssus, I know how much it means to you.  I don't have to understand it to know _that_.  It's not what Jedi do, but I don't want you to protect me from it.  I'm strong enough to know that what I want is to be strong for _you_ right now.  Not to make you drain your energy tiptoeing around me.  I don't see how I'm supposed to help anyone by _hiding_ from them, not when we're supposed to be figuring out how to change the Empire from within.  And _definitely not_ when I see my beloved going through a thing like this."

She drew me into her embrace, her eyes closed, her nose snug against my chest.  I could feel the rhythm of her breathing, slower and steadier than my own, her heartbeat affirming her life.  I clutched back at her, pulling her tighter.  "Thank you," I murmured, my body shuddering as I fought to hold the tears in.  "I...I wish _this_ weren't the way I have to introduce him to his future daughter in law.  I wanted...so much...but I _couldn't_..."

"I know, Tarssus," she whispered, running her hand slowly up and down my back.  "I know, Tarssus, I know you did."  I clung ever closer to the Togruta woman that I loved, wishing I could lose myself in her arms, never have to face the pain.

But face it I had to.  _We_ had to.  At least I had that.  Thank the stars I had that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soundtrack: ["It's Not Enough"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeRSlQlPkpo) by Dustin Kensrue


	2. Master of the Dead

** Star Wars: The Old Republic **

**In the Burning of the Light**  
**  
**"Forever Is Who We Are"  
Part 2: The Ethereal Counsel 

****

 

****

 

****

It went without saying that my meditations were disturbed, and not just as Ashara, the former Jedi, would have it.  Even by the kinder judgment of the Sith, there was no other word for it.  I found it impossible to be still--equally impossible to move, to dance.  Even when one has learnt to thrive on a multitude of diverse passions as I have, it is about bloody well impossible to meditate when one can barely sustain the energy of a _particular_ one for even a minute at a time.  And that is how it is when grief first seizes the spirit: the soul careens from one state to another seemingly at random...about the only thing like meditation I supposed I could manage was to simply taste this turbulence, name it for what it was.  Live with it.  Simply...live with it.

My heart warred between yearning for solitude and a desperate drive to break that same isolation.  Currents shifted within me, without...and it blew almost like a wind behind me, a wind comprised of a strange fusion of lightning and _being_.  I felt...a bit out of joint all of a sudden, at least by my own peculiar frame of reference: not as cut off from the living world as when I had Force-walked deep into the realms of the Force-sensitive dead, risking permanent severance from the body.  But I still felt as though my displacement had grown ever so slightly, like the redshifting of light in the relativistic universe.

I stood.  The sensation of the _Fury_ 's artificial gravity on my bones remained constant, confirming I had not come completely untethered from the material universe...even though what I now turned round to behold might seem to argue otherwise.

" _Blood of my blood_ ," boomed the familiar voice from behind its ethereal mask.

Lord Aloysius Kallig--my ancient Sith ancestor, the same one who had guided me free of Darth Zash's snares--there he stood once more, regarding me with what I could only discern by the Force.  Was that...pride?  Even after all the time he'd had by now to see just how different from him I _really_ was?

What escaped my mouth, however, was _far_ from a dignified welcome.  "Oh, _no_ ," I growled, folding my arms over my robes.

For it wasn't _just_ Lord Aloysius come to scuttle my meditations.  He stood flanked by two other Force-apparitions: one Togruta, one Sith Pureblood.  Two _very_ familiar spirits indeed--Kalatosh Zavros and Horak-mul, both of whom I had bound to me by blood-agreement during the long fight against Darth Thanaton.  And both of whom had made incredibly inconsiderate houseguests in my mind along with their fellow miscreants, Lord Ergast and Darth Andru.  _Those_ two, however, were nowhere to be seen.  Oh, _pity_ , that.

I had kept my bargain in the end, freeing all four Force-ghosts, trying as best I could to give them some sort of solace on the way out.  For not only had I managed to repair my body on Rakata and wrest my sanity back from them on Voss, but Horak-mul and I, at least, had come to some tolerance of each other by the end.  That said, after the nearly lethal ordeal of trying to contain the power of four cunning and inhospitable Sith Lords within me long enough to end Thanaton's quest to destroy me, I had not exactly pined to see any of them again.  Especially not now, when loss had struck so deep within my heart.  Needless to say, I _began_ this little interaction already on my _very last_ nerve: _oh, no, indeed._

 __" _I_ told _you he was going to drive us out_ ," Lord Zavros groused, leaning forward specifically to glare at the Sith Pureblood phantasm without Lord Aloysius blocking the way.  " _We ought to leave this to Lord Kallig_."  By this he meant Lord Aloysius, not myself.  " _I don't think Imperius has forgotten the wild rave we threw inside his head._ "

"And I'm _not_ about to go back for seconds on that," I snapped, utterly forgetting in the heat of the moment why my accusation was, to put it mildly, wildly inappropriate.  "So don't even _think_ about it."

" _What, you think that's what we're here for?_ " Horak-mul rebutted, looking...rather put out, actually.  He certainly _felt_ it: righteous indignation emanated off of him with far more clarity than I ever had with the living.

" _Can you really blame my son for that?_ " Lord Aloysius reminded his fellow Force-spectres, stepping in between them and me, and leaving me torn between two very distinct sentiments.  This distant ancestor was _not_  my father.  Not the one who had been with me through slavery until the 'recruiters' tore me away from everything I had known, and to whom I had never had the chance to return.  Yet it was also the first time Lord Aloysius had favored me with _this_ sort of warmth.  " _You put him through the mental and physical wringer, and I had to feel all of that all the way from Dromund Kaas and not be able to do one blasted thing about it_."  Which begged the question: how _was_  he here?  The last time we'd spoken, he had nearly run out of energy to project himself so far from the tomb to which he was bound.

But Lord Zavros gave me no time to ask.  He sighed--for effect, I supposed, or perhaps even force of habit.  " _I've come to regret that, you know.  After Darth Imperius opened my eyes, I saw all of that: what it did to him...to you, and to my own descendant as well.  I saw how she worried after him when he was ill, and I was too caught up in my greed for mortal life, too busy trying to overpower him and the other three, to even care about what that_ meant _.  Now?  Well, I can't help but feel it.  I know I can't undo it and it's a waste to try, but it's there now.  That knowledge will always be a part of me.  Oddly enough, I'm more_ whole _with it.  But I do have to acknowledge it._ "

That gave me pause, just as it seemed to do for Lord Aloysius, if his complete stillness was any indication.  Not once during Lord Zavros' time within me had the turncoat Togruta shown the slightest bit of compassion for Ashara, let alone for me, as Lord Aloysius had.  Even before he and I had struck the blood-agreement, he had been ready to strike the blood of _his_ blood dead until I interceded.  This truly _was_ new.  I could feel it.  And that meant my hopes had been fulfilled in the fullest: something _had_ awakened within them.  What I had done in my antechamber off the Hall of the Dark Council had succeeded.

I forced down the visceral indignation I felt at seeing two of the faces that had tormented my dreams and nearly shattered the very firmament of my mind.  These were...not their  _true_ selves--that wasn't the word for it.  For what I had experienced had been true to what they were in the mortal universe.  These were not two distinct entities from the ones I had faced before.  These were rather their _full_ selves: everything they were and everything they _could have been_ , restored to complete integrity.  It wouldn't do for me to further lash out at an incomplete picture of the whole that lived now only within the immutable world of my own past memory.  "So tell me," I finally inquired, after a few deep breaths to shunt my anger to the side, "why you're here."

" _I_ did _really blow an opportunity to get to know Ashara_ ," Lord Zavros confessed.  " _I didn't appreciate the chance I'd been given--and I made sure she_ wouldn't _appreciate it, with the way I acted.  This confession thing feels_ good _, as funny as it must sound to other people.  It's liberating.  So I was hoping to...well,_ apologize _to her for the things I said and did.  But I think it would be better if you talked to her first.  She_ is _a Zavros Sith, after all--and if I showed up at random in her cabin, I have a feeling 'thermonuclear' would be putting it mildly._ "

I didn't point out to Lord Zavros that even though Ashara _was_ for all intents and purposes a Sith apprentice, my beloved was still quite far from welcoming the lordship that would someday be her due.  "I'll see what I can do," I said instead, "but I can't make any promises.  You _are_ right: the Jedi tried, but they never doused the fire in her soul.  I'd sooner try to extinguish a star with the Force than push her to do something so incredibly _personal_ against her will."

" _Fair enough_ ," Lord Zavros acknowledged.  " _If you can, though...there i_ _s a lot to be said for coming to terms with things in life instead of after it.  It's so much harder to change once the mortal body dies.  I could never have done it on my own, Imperius, and I know it._ "

"I...ah...thank you," I stammered.  "I am glad my light could make a difference... _whatever_ it did.  It's so hard to explain, even though it came from me.  Somehow..."  To this day, I _still_ have no explanation for the deep and instinctive knowledge that flooded through me when the possibility of Force-ghost redemption first became real.  The words I'd said on Dromund Kaas had been so inadequate before the truth: _Let my light redeem you._   But that hadn't told the fullness of it.  Not by far. 

"All I did...was to name you, in my soul," I continued, fumbling for the explanation as best I could.  "To choose to know you.  To let myself understand that you were still _worth_ that, and to let you experience that for yourselves.  I think it _started_ with the light in me.  That much is true.  But I don't think it _finished_ that way.  Even with the Rakatan therapy--the power that went through me...I don't think I could have ever contained all of that inside me for any length of time, especially while the blood-agreements were still active.  Yet it happened.  That's the only thing I can say for sure."

A smile curled across the Togruta ghost's face, so like Ashara.  It was the first time I had ever seen his eyes filled with friendly mischief rather than the rapacious hunger to wreak havoc.  " _Well, however it got finished_ ," he said, " _you_ did _start it.  You definitely didn't have to.  Many Sith wouldn't have even kept their word to release us in the first place, let alone tried a heretical Force-healing ritual.  And that decision was all yours._ "

I dipped my head in a nod of respect...for some had now grown within me.  "I did very much want to be rid of you," I told him, though, with a wry twist of the lip.  "I wasn't about to hang on to you."

" _After you put down our little insurrection on Voss...you could easily have changed your mind_ ," Lord Zavros pointed out.  " _I've seen that often enough when a Sith truly brings a new power source under his full control.  You stayed true to the blood-agreements, though.  Admirable...but Imperius, it will only get harder from here_."

"No kidding," I muttered, half to myself.  Hearing even the Force-ghosts call me by that name...the name of not just a Sith Lord and a Darth, but that of a Dark Councillor--it drove that point all the deeper.  I glanced over now at Horak-mul.  "I get why _they're_ here," I said, indicating Lord Aloysius and Lord Zavros.  "But I'm not sure about _you_.  _Do_ tell me you're not somehow another long-lost relative of mine--"

The Sith Pureblood positively roared with laughter.  His entire ethereal frame shook with it.  " _No, no, certainly not, Imperius--no!  True, there's a real irony in calling people like me Purebloods--our forebears_ did _all have human genetics spliced into them, but no...there were no Kallig genes in me.  No Revel or Drellik ones, either_ ," Horak-mul added, " _though I could certainly see how I might have been accused of having some Revel in me...or Revel having some Horak-mul in_ him _!_ "

There was something of a wild, tightly-coiled energy I'd felt in Horak-mul, to be sure, that reminded me of my carousing pirate-turned-pilot.  But to think the two of them were _related_ somehow?  Balderdash.  "I do thank you for not testing the limits of my suspension of disbelief," I smirked.  "Even for the few species that can actually interbreed, the galaxy isn't _that_ small.  So...what _does_ bring you here?  I would've thought you'd have had enough of the living world after finally getting free of your tomb on Hoth."

" _What_ ," Horak-mul retorted, another laugh shaking his great shoulders, " _you thought I was simply going to_ sit still _in some_ other _place after all of that sitting somewhere else?  When have I_ ever _sat still, when something wasn't pinning me down by force?  I haven't_ sat still _since I was a little boy made to listen to tutor-droids droning on and on about this poem or that equation--what makes you think I'm about to start now?  I thought for sure you of all people would get that redemption does not equal_ stagnation _!_ "

I couldn't help myself in spite of everything going on outside the meditation chamber: I smiled again.  "Point scored," I conceded.  "I suppose you do have ample time to poke around this realm, on top of any of the _other_ ones out there.  But why here and now?  Why did you choose to come in _this_ point of time to _me_?"  The smile and all other vestiges of mirth faded--reality invaded once again.  "Has Lord Aloysius told you what I'm on the way to do?  What I have to do is for family.  And you yourself said it: you have no ties to me or to any of my family, whether biological, or kinship by choice."

" _I suppose there is still one vague tie: the apology I owe_."  I raised one skeptical eyebrow.  What apology other than to me, and how could this have to do with my family?" _Drellik wasn't your brother_ then," Horak-mul specified, " _but he is now.  And I certainly put him through the gauntlet.  He took it far more bravely than most of the Forceless ever would, but to weather all of that--and then the petty destruction I demanded in the tomb...desecrating my rivals' relics seemed like the most important thing in the universe to me.  Drellik knew better.  I didn't.  And I see that now.  Do give Drellik that message for me_."

"I will..." Still, I could feel it: there was something quite a bit more than that.  "That doesn't resolve the question of time and place, though.  What else is happening right here and right now, to bring you here, when your message for Talos could have waited for later?"

" _Your task may be for family right now_ ," Horak-mul intoned, " _but nothing you do occurs in isolation.  Not anymore, Imperius--not as a Dark Councillor.  Even now on the most private of errands, you must stay vigilant.  We have made observations, all three of us--things you dare not lose sight of your first time out into an unsecured area since your accession_."  


One thing was for sure: being made Dark Councillor meant a sudden cottage industry in target-practice drones with holos of my face on them.  I'd dealt with threats before--specific ones, identifiable dangers: Zash and her lunatic quest for immortality, Thanaton and his Kaggath challenge.  _This_...death wasn't exactly blasting down the hatches anymore, but it hung out there like a nebular haze--ill-defined, but very much _there_ , and ready to ignite as soon as something crushed it down to critical mass.

But this I certainly hadn't seen coming.  I tried my best not to gape like a stunned Hutt at the Force-spectres.  "You...did _opposition_ _research_ for me?  All three of you?  Why?"  Lords Aloysius and Zavros _\--_ _their_ interest was readily apparent, but surely Horak-mul's wanderlust wouldn't have favored his return to well-trodden territory...that remained beyond my grasp.  
  
" _This is something new in the Empire_ ," Horak-mul replied, " _something that may save it from another cycle of destruction, even if for a time.  I learned how committed you were during my time with you--even through adversity, some of which was of_ our _making.  It would be something extraordinary to see it all through._ "  
  
_"I have seen the effects on the people beneath you_ ," Lord Zavros added.  " _There will be those to watch, of course--Darth Achelon's gratitude for sparing him may not last forever if he starts thinking he could serve your Sphere_ _better than you.  He'll be an invaluable source to learn more of Thanaton's work as you set your priorities.  But watch that you never approach him with a plan that hasn't already been well framed out and tested for soundness.  For the earlier stages of research you would do better with the Moffs: Pyron, Drellik,_ _and Chairos, for example...but even then, you should maintain your own back-channels.  Ways to reach loyal experts whenever you want, but with less risk of eavesdropping.  Your brother would be helpful for that.  Don't let his rank fool you; he's likely to have cultivated quite a network over the years.  And there will be plenty of people who see working with you as being in the Empire's best interests.  They w_ _on't want to go back to a more capricious, self-interested Councillor.  You can give them structure and sanity.  That respect will turn more people to you than terror ever did.  The Jedi were partly right in that...though they didn't understand_ _that sometimes you_ do _have to use fear when nothing else works.  If you stay tough and reasonable like you have so far--that may well lower the threat a bit.  There may even be allegiances you've sown without even knowing it at the time.  Consider those you have given their due along the way..._ "

The image of a Chiss officer took shape in my mind unbidden--the strategist from Hoth, whose superior had been so ready to deny the non-human the credit he deserved for their victory.  "Yudrass," I recalled.  "Those species-obsessed fools would've been perfectly willing to throw him under the landspeeder if I hadn't said something."  The Togruta ghost smirked when I hit the word 'fools.'  "He's been on the rise ever since I got the truth out."  
  
" _The truth--that's served you better than most Sith would think_ ," Lord Zavros commented.  
  
"You would never have convinced Darth Serevin of that," I remarked.  "He may have hidden it fairly well, but I could tell he wanted to tear my entrails out with the Force right there in front of the Voss diplomats, for telling the Voss the _truth_ Talos and I found about their origins!  It wasn't the convenient, manufactured, _backwards_ little 'truth' he wanted to feed them, some nonsense that their Gormak enemies were the ones the Jedi unnaturally created.  Did he _really_ think no one on Voss was going to fact-check that little lie, if I'd let him get away with it?  _Someone_ would have found the real truth--if Talos and I could do it, then it could and _would_ have happened again!  Serevin may have thought I undid all his 'hard work'--but what might some successor of his enjoy someday?  The Voss learning that the Empire _told them the truth_ , even when it was painful.  Even when it hurt _our_ short-term interests.  If they are worth _anything_ , they'll come to grips with that in time.  And the treaty the Empire strikes will be the stronger for it."  
  
The gaze with which Lord Zavros regarded me in that moment was...disconcerting.  " _There are certain decisions we make that reverberate into the future in ways we never anticipate at the time.  That, I believe, was one of them_."  
  
A chill slid down my spine.  "You _know_ something.  What is it you aren't telling me?"  
  
" _I don't_ know _anything_."  Nonetheless, Zavros' tone echoed low, ominous.  " _But I_ do _see one thing.  Someday--in the future, but sooner than you think--you will return to Voss, and your course on that day will hinge on the path you took before._ "  
  
"Are you saying you've seen my _future_?"  I crossed my arms.  "I don't place stock in visions.  I didn't on Voss, I didn't with Zash, and granted...you may be in a better position than any of _them_ , but those things are easily proven wrong.  Or unfold terribly different to how we think we will."  
  
" _No, Imperius_."  
  
My patience was beginning to wear thin.  "Oh, good, that's settled, then."  
  
Zavros took my vexation in stride, though.  " _You're right to be skeptical.  Time takes on a different perspective once it stops whittling away at you.  The connections--_ those _are easy to see.  Those are the chances we're given, but it says nothing about the chances we_ take _.  The outcomes--_ those _are always shifting, and even the act of observing may twist future one way or the other.  The Uncertainty Principle of Quanta...the Observer Effect.  Those apply to time just as they do the elementary particles.  That's the part that so few understand.  Never let any visionary convince you that they know the answers to your future...for they can't_ control _them.  And even you, if you see it for yourself--the effect of your seeing in and of itself is so strong that either it will invalidate the vision...or you will surrender your will to it entirely.  Better the former than the latter. You can control the unknown far more than what you believe is known and fixed._."  
  
Was it me, though, or had I just seen a silent, absurdly pantomimed _yawn_ from the Force-ghost of the ancient Sith Lord Horak-mul at all of this?  _Don't look over there_ , I chanted to myself, _don't look over there_.  Lord Aloysius, for his part, hadn't budged an inch.  
__  
"'Control the unknown'..."  I snorted.  "That sounds like an oxymoron.  But there's sense in it.  You _can_ control what you do in each moment that leads there."  
  
Lord Zavros flashed a crooked smile.  " _There's hope for you.  Bear that in mind--and always watch your back and remember the immense political skill some of your followers may have cultivated in place of actually doing their_ jobs _like you do...and you may yet have a chance._ "  
  
"I won't lose sight of that," I promised.  Easier said than done--watching my back with so many politicians and lying sycophants flitting about the Empire could well be a full-time job in its own right.  At this rate, I was wondering if I might need to keep a book with all the names of my enemies, like the Sith Lords I'd heard of in bedtime stories as a boy.  Perhaps now that I had expelled Zash from Khem Val, and offered Val the chance to go his own way--one he'd inexplicably refused after all this time--I could assign some of that work to Andronikos Revel.  He certainly had experience tracing webs upon webs of enemies and malcontents...most of which he'd stirred up himself back in the old days, but still.  
  
" _Good.  And watch over Ashara.  If you believe she'll see me...let me know.  I'll recognize the summons_."  With that promise, Lord Zavros faded from my senses off to who knew where, leaving Horak-mul and Lord Aloysius.  
  
" _I had some fun sneaking around the Dark Councillors_ ,"  Horak-mul said as soon as Zavros disappeared entirely.  Then he flashed a toothy grin.  " _Present company excluded, of course._ "  
  
I returned a smirk of my own.  "I should hope."  
  
" _No sneaking with_ you.  _You'd know it straight away, first of all.  And second--it's_ you _.  So no.  I kept it to the other Councillors._ "  
  
"Wise choice."  
  
" _Hah.  Indeed._ "  
  
Other choices though...my brow furrowed, diadem seeming to multiply in weight.  "But were the _other_ choices so wise?" I pointed out.  "I should most _certainly_ hope you went undetected--Thanaton warned the whole Council that I am a Force-walker.  That...for whatever reason unbeknownst to all of us...I am closely aligned to the dead."  Lord Aloysius' helmeted head whipped towards me at that.  He held his tongue, but _something_ about that statement had rattled him.  That I sensed without question, and I dared not forget, even as pressing as it was to find out _exactly_ what Horak-mul had done.  "If the Councillors ever even _suspect_ you were there--and with their Force-mastery, that's a good bit more likely than it was with Zavros...your activity _will_ be traced back to me.  Which _will_ undo this 'new thing in the Empire' you wanted to see so badly.  And of course kill off your protagonist.  Which means that _you'd_ be bored and _I'd_ be dead."   
  
I pretended to think, then flashed my best impression of an evil grin.  "I take back 'you'd be bored.'  Not with the chase _I'd_ give you for your troubles!"  
  
" _Hah!  I_ knew _there was a reason I liked you, Imperius.  Even in my most bloody-minded days, I had to admit your mind was never a dreary place--_ "  
  
_"So_ pleased that you found my misery so entertaining," I retorted--this time very much minus grin.  
__  
" _As I said...bloody-minded_."  Horak-mul shrugged--not so much to minimize it, I sensed, but a concession that there was nothing to be done about the past.  " _Anyway, as to chasing me across the afterlife--an opportunity you'll never get_ ," the Sith Pureblood proudly proclaimed, " _not a one of them spotted me.  Certainly an interesting--and dangerous--cast of characters there, though.  Dangerous to_ you _, anyway.  Darth Ravage--no mystery where_ he _stands.  He's as opposed to you as he was to Zhorrid.  Your youth works against_ you _even more than it did with her._ "  
  
I nodded, recalling his words to me after Thanaton's fall.  "He certainly didn't make _that_ hard to spot."  
  
" _No--but that's only the_ obvious _threat.  Those are the easy ones.  There are others that don't tip their hand so easily.  But you have to know who your_ greatest _threat is--and I can confirm it._ "  The guardian of the Sphere of Sith Philosophy, the master of propaganda and ideological purity, and the safeguard against goodwill towards Jedi and their heresy.  If he only knew the extent of my own heresy...it would matter not that I drew it all straight from the Sith Code itself: passion--strength--power--victory--freedom.  To know I understood the Light as well as the Dark would be enough for him.  I shivered once more.  Our lips formed the word as one.  " _Darth Aruk._ "  
  
I let that sink in.  "Just _lovely_."  
  
" _He took Thanaton's charges against you seriously_ ," Horak-mul warned.  " _And though it's_ perfectly _permissible to take on former Jedi, that does always draw his scrutiny._ "  
  
"Has he opened an inquisition?"  
  
Horak-mul narrowed his eyes and for once, paused to consider.  " _Doesn't look like it to me_ ," he soon answered.  " _You_ did _stand your ground against Thanaton.  You answered the Kaggath--you didn't shy away from it like a Jedi.  And you know how to make Dark power serve you--your lightning_ was _a statement of your anger in the duel, and no Jedi would even_ dare _contemplate binding spirits.  Not even by blood-agreement.  For all Thanaton's love for tradition_ , he _was the one who broke it in the end by begging for help from the Dark Council--whereas you proved you were ready to live or die on your own worth.  And your actions at the Academy...Aruk is completely in the dark as to why you killed Harkun and took on Xalek.  From what I heard him tell Lord Caliqu, he doesn't plan to go beyond observation with you right now.  That could all change in an instant, of course.  And he knows he'd have Ravage's support at a minimum, no questions asked, as soon as he made the accusation_." __  
  
"So I suppose the general lesson where the Dark Council is concerned is to never turn my back or I'll end up with a saber in it.  I'd say that meets with all my _loftiest_ expectations."  _Oh, the things I've got myself into_ , I thought to myself.  
  
" _Mostly_ ," said the ancient Sith.  " _But not entirely.  You_ have _attracted the attention of a few Councillors who may see the benefits of having you alive and in your Council seat.  Two of them in particular could well be a powerful deterrent against some of the people who might want to try something.  You impressed Darth Vowrawn with your first policy address to your Sphere, for starters._ "  
  
The most tenacious, longest-surviving member of the Dark Council--that _would_ be something if true.  But the Sith Pureblood Councillor of the Sphere of Production and Logistics had seemed just as thrilled at the prospect of witnessing my demise as anyone--the look of disappointment on his face when Darth Mortis struck the wounded Thanaton down had been as blatant as could be.  "Vowrawn loves the thrill of intrigue...and blood-sport," I told Horak-mul.  With the amount of time Vowrawn had had to cultivate a legend, even the smallest slave child knew _that_.  "Would he not have been just as glad to see Thanaton defeat me as the reverse?  I don't think he cared for seeing the contest cut short.  There'll always be that doubt in the back of his mind as to whether I could _really_ have bested Thanaton."  
  
" _Smart suspicion_ ," Horak-mul commended.  " _Vowrawn_ does _love the thrill of the duel.  But I can tell you what he_ despises _even more than he loves a fight to the death.  And that is other Councillors wasting what he's gone to such lengths to procure, in senseless berserker rages.  And he_ also _loathes wasting talent with anti-alien policies.  Another Councillor who would support him in taking the chance of assigning people where their_ skills _, and not their species demand--he may well see dividends in you.  He may even maneuver certain threats away from you if he sees you as a resource to be preserved.  Never let him think you need or want it.  Never act as if you fear the threats against you.  But remember what you told your followers, and he may well become a bellwether to you_.  _Remember it_ well _._ "  
  
I hardly even had to _remember_ it.  There were holorecordings of it everywhere.  It had even made the bloody HoloNet News, in censored form to remove the words spoken specifically to the Sith under my command.  And the analysis was rather limited, of course, given the Sphere of Sith Philosophy and its enforcement of political orthodoxy, but still, there I was, the subject of political commentary for all to see.  There were even fashion designers puttering over the possible significance of my robes and diadem, for crying out loud!   
  
Utterly surreal, that.  
  
But yes: I well remembered that speech in its uncut form, especially the concluding words _..._  
  
As I said on my accession day--we are the guardians of the Empire's heritage.   
  
But we are also guardians of its progeny.  Never forget that.  Any recklessness that may have gone on in the past--it ends now.  I will be far quicker to forgive the asking of an intelligent question that ends with nothing, than I will a foolish assumption that leads either to blindly rushing in, or _to holding back too long for fear of the risks that were 'common knowledge' but never properly challenged and verified.  We will not squander time and knowledge on those things.  That is not to say loyalty to our great Empire goes out the window.  In fact, it is our loyalty that motivates this.  The path to securing our future is both by preserving our past and launching off of its firm foundation to innovate our future._  
  
Furthermore--let one more thing be known.  I answered Thanaton's Kaggath against me not only to preserve my standing and that of my people, but to stop him from destroying the materiel--and the manpower _\--of our Empire for a personal vendetta.  I had the option on my victory of obliterating his name from history and forbidding our citizens from speaking about him.  I chose not to, because it would be foolish to deny what we all know took place, for one, and I will not insult your intelligence.  It would be even_ more _foolish to deny us all the opportunity to learn from the consequences of his actions.  That is part of what being the guardians of the past entails.  Thanaton was ready to throw away victory on Corellia to defeat_ one man _!_  
  
That sort of insanity will not _occur on my watch!  If you have a dispute, Darths and Lords of the Sphere of Ancient Knowledge, and there is no resolution for it but blood, understand that it_ shall _be resolved strictly amongst yourselves!  If you think you'll advance yourselves on the backs of our own military, or our civilian subjects, that will be the last mistake you ever make!  Anyone who destroys the physical or personnel resources of the Empire to defeat their rival will answer once and for all to_ my _Force.  Choose wisely!_  
  
I wished I could end the disunity amongst us altogether.  But to rewrite the whole of Sith tradition--that lay far beyond my power indeed.  Horak-mul had been most clear on the reasons for that.  All I could hope to do was contain certain aspects at least a little, and hope to hell that example had an effect.  But I knew I could never hope to back that on rhetoric alone.  I dreaded that day, but I knew it would come when I would have to make good on my threat.  As for Vowrawn--I knew he would be watching and waiting to see if my strength and my will would hold.  
  
" _Vowrawn has eyes and ears everywhere_ ," Horak-mul said, as if he could hear my thoughts.  " _And they have brought him a promising report where you're concerned.  You would be wise not to disappoint.  But he is not the only one.  Marr and Acina--they respect pragmatism as well.  Don't ask for favor--but if you have a discovery within your Sphere that will do well for the Empire, approach them first.  It's the four of you who are most likely to find common cause._ "  
  
"I had heard that about Darth Marr as a slave," I confirmed.  "That of all the Dark Council, he was the Empire's truest defender.  Acina...I never heard much of her.  But it's encouraging to know that the Council's technological research arm may be under some sort of reasonable management as well as our military defense."  
  
Horak-mul nodded, closing his eyes for a second.  " _I saw the first interstellar Sith Empire rise...and then die after me._   Your _Empire still stands a chance to head off the same fate, if enough of you can gain control.  Naive idealism won't do that.  But pragmatism will._ "  
  
"Maybe this _is_ just naive idealism," I mused in the moment, "but maybe it might even show the Republic that there's something truly worthwhile in the Sith way.  That we _deserve_ to exist, to be heard.  That we offer something far more complete than the Jedi could ever have."  
  
" _Good luck getting through to fanatics_ ," the ancient spirit quipped, " _whatever side of the border they come from_."  It wasn't just Thanaton, Aruk, Caliqu, and their ilk.  I had had my run-ins on the Republic side of the border, all right: Nomar Organa, Ryen and Ocera, all talk of peace until they saw the wrong robes and saber, no matter what one said or did.  There was where peace became a lie, and honesty itself went out the window in favor of zealotry.  They weren't all like that, of course.  My beloved Ashara was proof enough that Jedi indoctrination could be overcome, one bit at a time.  So maybe there was more hope than in just a single shining star.   
  
" _Still_ ," Horak-mul admitted, " _I never thought I'd see you live through all that you have, Imperius.  So perhaps it might just be time for me to shut up and let you get to work on doing more of the impossible_."  
  
 I took the bait.  "Ahh, well, when you put it like _that_..."  
  
" _Very well, then!_ " he huffed in mock indignation.  " _I have a whole universe of_ other _things to stick my nose into.  I'll be back sometime or another--it's not like I don't have all eternity to spare!_ "  
  
And with that, the boisterous Force ghost faded from my senses, leaving me alone with one last spectre: that of my own ancestor, Lord Aloysius Kallig.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soundtrack: ["Angels and Men"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHjm09aGtRA) by Juno Reactor


	3. Within the Mists' Embrace

** Star Wars: The Old Republic **  


**In the Burning of the Light**

**"Forever Is Who We Are"**  
**Part 3: Within the Mists' Embrace**

****

"Lord Aloysius."  I greeted my long-distant ancestor, the one from whose relic I had forged my diadem.  The one spirit I had encountered in my struggles against Zash and Thanaton who had never once told me false.  "Do forgive my surprise from earlier.  I was not expecting any of you.  And you, m'lord...I was unaware you had found another way to leave the Dark Temple."

" _Your actions have reached further than any of us could have expected, my son.  I may not have been the target of your healing, but healed I have been nonetheless._ "  There it was again: my son.  I could _feel_ the radiance in my ancestor's voice like the beams of the Dromund star upon my frame.  If Lord Aloysius could have made his forgotten smile visible to me somehow, I believe he would have then.  

" _Tarssus--Darth Imperius--you are named not as an embodiment of something within yourself, as are most of the Council, but for what you_ serve _.  The Dark Council has made you a standard-bearer, not unlike the Emperor's Hands...his Voice...or his Wrath.  What differs for you is that instead of embodying the will of your superior,_ you _have become a symbol of your subordinates: the people.  The forgotten common virtues of the Empire itself.  I know you understand the true honor of your position as most of your fellow Councillors cannot.  Vowrawn is the provider for the people.  Marr holds even more fame as their defender.  You..._ "  Lord Aloysius paused, letting the weight of his words fall before me.  " _You_ are _them.  Do you grasp the difference, Tarssus?  This is key._ "

Slowly, I nodded.  "My low birth--no offense meant to you, m'lord..."

" _It was what it was_ ," Lord Aloysius stoically replied.

"It seems to me," I posited, "that I needn't hide my origins as much as a Dark Councillor ordinarily would.  I have greater latitude to acknowledge where I come from."  I bowed my head, my voice dipping to something between a rumble and a whisper.  "And to honor my family.  My father."  After a moment, I continued.  "I will still have to keep it low-profile--but it won't damage the...persona I must wear, as it would have Thanaton, or another Councillor.  And I still must hide my heresy, or I _will_ be purged.  But a bit of it can hide in plain sight."

Lord Aloysius canted his helmeted head to the side; I sensed from him...not disappointment, but a clear sense that I had not quite delivered what he hoped.  " _You understand how to fill your role_ ," he noted.  " _That is helpful.  But you must also remember the_ precariousness _of being a standard-bearer, Imperius, and particularly one whose power comes from below and not above._ "

I shuddered.  "I never asked for it," I admitted, half to myself--but then, to nearly anyone else, I supposed that was exactly how it _would_ appear: me holding court with myself.  Nothing I hadn't done before, as far as they were concerned.  "I wanted to better the Empire...but I never thought to look beyond defeating Thanaton.  Beyond protecting my people...our troops...and my family, from that ridiculous Kaggath that Thanaton was ready to sacrifice them all to.  I just wanted it to stop and go back to--"

" _To what, my boy?  'Normal'?_ "  Lord Aloysius shook his head.  " _With Zash gone and Thanaton dead, there was nothing you could go_ back _to, not as the Sith Lord you are.  When Thanaton staked his life against you, that fool set you up to replace him on the Dark Council.  He never did see you for all that you are.  Even the rest of the Council--they_ still _don't fully realize, not even after meeting you in person.  Watch them; they'll expect your vigilance.  But they may never understand why you have become the standard-bearer that they see.  That lack of understanding could become almost as much reason for them to fear you and the influence you hold with the people, as it would be for them to learn the truth.  They could sacrifice you to appease the Emperor, or each other, if you are not careful._ "

I nodded, a knot settling deep in my stomach.  "That's the thing about carrying the flag.  You tend to be shot at."

" _I use the term 'standard-bearer' for a reason_ ," Lord Aloysius confirmed.  " _And for that reason, among many more, it is fortunate you chose wisely in who to add to our family--that closest layer of support.  Most Sith don't enjoy the type of absolute intimacy you have.  I...did not.  I knew physical passion.  I knew--I_ thought _I knew--comrades-in-arms.  But you truly do_ have family _.  I have observed your beloved.  Her ideology...is a challenge.  But if there is one worthy thing she brings from the Jedi, it is devotion to something outside herself.  You feel that sort of devotion as well.  And that draws the two of you together without pretense.  Your brother looks out for you as well; you were wise to recognize what already existed, even though Talos saw a different possibility at first.  You are among the few Sith who does not have to bear his burden--that of standard-bearer or otherwise--alone._ "

"Even among the Jedi that's true," I reflected, thinking of Ashara.  "That only a precious few of them bear their burdens _with_ one another instead of alone.  They may not fight amongst themselves as we Sith do, but it's still true of them, just as it is for us.  They may seek to be sages instead of the avowed warriors that we are, but they are denied the right to family, and even taught to fear being drawn in by their friendships.  And _then_ what are they told about that fear?  Deaden yourself even further or become the worst of _us_."  I set my hand to my heart.  "You know I don't pretend that we aren't in grave danger from ourselves as an Order, m'lord.  We are.  But I refuse to see the Force-wielders of the Empire stripped of the opportunity to even _know who they are_ and _know where they come from_.  I may be a 'heretic,' but I will _not_ throw my lot in with the Jedi.  If we Sith are obliterated...I fear that we will be left with a galaxy that will never recognize the saber it has put through its own heart."

" _It is the riskier path--but the braver one, to stay true to yourself and your people as Sith.  Better to remain Sith, to preserve the freedom to err or to grow as complete beings, than to surrender to a pale future ruled by half-shadows of men.  You have not just shown me that path, but earned my faith that you can follow it.  As I said...the things you have done have had effects you couldn't have foreseen.  It is hard to grow and change when you no longer age, just like Horak-mul said.  Yet that happened, without my even being in the room that day on Dromund Kaas with the bound ghosts.  The change you began was completed in me.  And I thank you_."

I bowed, raising my right hand and touching the fingertips to the diadem that represented my sole tangible connection to Lord Aloysius.  "I am honored, m'lord."

Lord Aloysius raised his palm to me.  " _Rise, my young one._ "  He touched the side of his helm, the memory of that which resided with me in new form.  " _I am no longer bound to the Dark Temple; I have the freedom to appear to you at will now.  I will not hold you back from living your life, but I will be there when it is wise.  True allies will always be at a premium in the life you live.  I will be among them._ "

I felt a near overwhelming sense from the ancient spirit that he had more to say, so I held my tongue in spite of the emotions coursing through me.

" _For you...those outside of our family can serve--but some more than others.  Rûmaz--the Emperor's Wrath--he is more like you than others would believe.  I attest to this.  Some of your companions, though, and his...not so much.  But among your own, your judgment has been sound.  Revel--Khem Val--they will be transient associates, as you have already surmised.  Wisdom is in recognizing when it is time.  Xalek...he remains an enigma, and it is his choice how he will solve it.  Provide him the pieces--observe the results with honesty and accept what they require.  And that is all you can do._ "

Even with the powerful sense of _presence_ \--of _reality_ that permeated the air that seemed to shape itself into the form of my ancestor, I could no more divine the future from him than I could from anything in the mortal world.  Yet his _reality itself_ rang truer, more solid to my Force senses than anything save where the Force directly entered and exited me, and those whom I loved.  There would be no answers regarding Xalek in his apparition.  Lord Aloysius' counsel was indeed the best I could do.  Watch and wait.

As Lord Aloysius seemed to be doing with me right now.  I could not see his eyes, of course; even in the mortal world, Tulak Hord had so thoroughly obliterated records of his appearance beneath his armor that the combined resources of two brothers--one the head of the Sphere of Ancient Knowledge and the other a specialist archaeologist, had found no image to show this spirit to revive his memory.  Perhaps he sought an answer in my own features, but even that was doomed to fail: millennia would have diluted his features to complete unrecognizability in me, whereas a single trait--the ability to bend the Force to my will--passed down intact.  Our kinship was mostly a matter of ancient records and Force by now.  But that had been enough to bring this tormented old spirit to love.

Whatever passed through Lord Aloysius' thoughts now, I knew enough to recognize those ancient ties, whatever they truly were, lay at the heart of it.  Of why whatever he had to say weighed so deeply upon him.  "If I may..."  I took one step forward.  It gave me no glimpse of the eyes he surely felt without seeing.  But the closeness...mattered anyway.  "What troubles you so, Lord Aloysius?  I can _feel_ it deep within me.  I can try to do what I did before, on Dromund Kaas, if you need it--I don't know how it will go with no blood-agreement binding us, but I am willing to try..."

Lord Aloysius waved his hand in gentle dismissal.  " _I am sound enough of spirit by now that it isn't necessary, my son.  But you are right: I_ am _troubled by something, though I hope it is easily enough remedied.  You said while you were speaking with Horak-mul that you did not understand what it was that connects you so tightly with the dead_."  He shook his head.  " _Darth Zash knew.  She knew it from the instant she laid eyes upon you and saw the strangeness of the Force that cloaks you.  But she hid the reason from you, hoping to limit your power through imposed ignorance until she had a chance to take your body and combine her Force-mastery with the power inherent in you.  That lack of understanding cannot be allowed to continue, Tarssus...and not just for your safety.  This is part of what makes you_ who you are _.  You_ deserve _to know_."

"I suppose I ought to sit down for this?" I quipped as if in a holonovel.  But the truth was...however lightly I spoke, whatever this was, if it weighed on Lord Aloysius, it weighed on me.  And I longed to know.

Lord Aloysius shrugged.  " _If it suits you.  My armor has not weighed upon my bones for many centuries...I defer to your youth._ "

I smirked.  "How very backwards.  The rest of the Dark Council could learn from your fine example.  But since it _does_ suit me..."  I knelt, then folded my legs into a more comfortable position.

The armored apparition matched my pose with far greater ease than I would have expected.  But then it didn't really matter to him, as he said, the limitations of the mortal plane.  

Then he leaned forward, and spoke softly.  " _You have no memory of your mother, Tarssus, do you?_ "

I shook my head.  My father had always claimed he saw it in my eyes--her eyes staring out from a face like his own, he'd always said.  But for me...there was only Father's word.  "She died in childbirth," I told Lord Aloysius, the same words I had spoken many times in my life, always evoking the vague sense of something missing.  Something ill-defined, that neither the boy's nor the man's mind had the faintest idea how to fill other than with an abstraction, a composite of a concept.  "Father told me about her...he said she left something of herself in me.  But he always told me to think about what I _had_ , not what I didn't...just like he chose to focus on what she gave us.  Not to live only in what the process took away."

My eyes darted down to the floor, then gazed off at an angle past Lord Aloysius' shoulder.  "I think about it sometimes anyway.  The fact that my coming into the world killed my mother.  I don't have to worry about something like that happening when I look at Ashara; it's adoption for us, whenever the time comes.  I can hardly imagine what Father went through.  For a lesser man...it might have been easier to see a child like me sold to another master so he wouldn't have to live with a constant reminder of the pain.  But Father _chose_ to love me.  That's how I learnt what love is.  It is a passion and an act combined.  Not a mere instinct.  So many people choose to forget it when they suffer too deeply--or they live lives without _enough_ suffering.  But others choose to hold on to love anyway.  That's what Father decided.  To let the giving, not the taking, define him..."

My voice cracked despite my best efforts.  "It's...it's an enormous legacy to live up to.  Just as much as--even more _because_ I have become a Dark Councillor of the Sith.  Now that I know what it means to lose a part of my family before his time..."  I sniffed, barely cutting off the tears that threatened to overflow.  "The depth of that legacy only grows."

" _You describe a worthy man_ ," Lord Aloysius acknowledged.  " _If there was one thing to be gained from my generations falling so far into servitude, it was coming into contact with a man like that, with such a noble heart in such low surroundings.  It was not your father who was Kallig, though, even though he raised the best of us.  It was your mother._ "

"Ohh..."  It suddenly made sense to me now--why when I had searched the records to prepare manumission papers for my father that I had found a surname generations back for him.  Serren Ostelin was the full name I had sent him in the letter that provided him with his freedom.  The records had been far sketchier surrounding my mother.  I had put this down to her death at a mere nineteen years of age--barely even a woman, perishable merchandise that had gone off prematurely, unproductive in our former master's eyes, not worth fussing about.  Father had only known to call her Jerriel.  That was the only name she had known, just as I had been only Tarssus for most of my life.  Slaves descended from a line of slaves did not have the privilege of a surname.  "No wonder," I said.  "Were we Kalligs slaves all the way back to your Kaggath?"

" _Not_ that _far back.  But long enough_ ," Lord Aloysius confirmed, " _long enough to finish Tulak Hord's work of erasing the memory of me so far that not even my own descendants could remember who they were.  Tulak Hord couldn't stop the potential for the Force from carrying through to her, though.  And from her to you, where it manifested in full._ "

"You said the circumstances of my birth affect my powers--why they act the way they do.  Were you like me--this Master of the Dead, as I've been called?"

" _No_ ," said Lord Aloysius.  " _I had no particular affinity with spirits before becoming one.  I was a warrior.  I paid little heed to such things until I had to.  It was your birth_ itself _that changed the Force in you, not the genetics.  There is no way to know how your powers may have manifested otherwise, but you_ were _changed.  Not_ diminished _, but certainly altered.  There are cases where Sith lose a parent in their earliest years retain a far deeper memory than unaided biology can explain.  For you...something different happened.  Something more fundamental._ "

Suddenly the memory of my father's voice, haunted, jumped to the fore.  _There wasn't any help for us_ , I could remember him saying.  _Just me, Jerriel, and Kenosa trying her best as midwife.  The labor was too much--nothing was working...and then we started losing her--_ both _of you.  She...she stopped breathing, and all I remember is Kenosa shaking my shoulders and shouting at me as I tried to say goodbye, screaming at me that it couldn't be her--that_ I _had to make the decision...so I did.  I don't remember taking the knife.  But I did.  I cut where Kenosa told me to cut--and I pulled you out.  You didn't start breathing, Tarssus, even when Kenosa cut the cord.  I was so terrified I'd done...what I did...for nothing...!  Kenosa started chest compressions and finally--_ finally _you gasped and screamed for your life.  I don't even know how to describe it, Tarssus--I was screaming and crying too, as I reached out to hold you for the first time..._

 __A chill ran down my spine...not fear, but something else.  Reverence, perhaps.  I had always thought Father and Kenosa had pulled me back from the brink before time ran out.  But it had been something more...!  "I _died_ ," I breathed out.  "Just like I did later, when Thanaton defeated me in our first fight.  I was...stillborn.  And brought back to life."

Lord Aloysius offered a slow, solemn nod, the rest of him absolutely motionless.  " _Precisely, Tarssus_ ," he responded in the same soft voice in which he had first asked about Mother.  " _You were born dead.  Your first moments of full consciousness were of following your mother towards the other side_."

"And then they pulled me back.  But I--"  My breath caught once, twice, as I forced out the incredible words.  "Are you saying that somehow...I never did come all the way back?"  I could hardly believe my next question, even as it emerged from my mouth.  Yet I had seen so many _things_ among the Sith--how could I _not_ need to know?  "Am I...am I actually _alive_?  Really, truly alive, like the rest of my family?  Or am I some sort of...reanimated thing?"

" _No, no, Tarssus, my son._ "  A spectral hand reached out for me, just short of where it would have touched my shoulder.  " _You very much have a life to live.  A real, true, and natural one.  You are absolutely alive, Tarssus, you are human.  Passing through death and returning from it always has its effects, no matter your age when it happens.  It would have even if your first time had been when Darth Thanaton struck you down.  But for dying with your mother to be your first independent experience...it left the resonance of your Force potential far more attuned to the other world than normal.  That is why you see us so easily.  Why you take so well to Force-walking and similar rituals.  It is your deep instinct since birth, to seek that to which you are innately attuned.  Part of you_ does _belong to the next world in some way.  But that doesn't_ deprive _you of your living self.  Your self simply_ grew _to fill the space in the living world that results from part of you existing elsewhere.  You are whole as you are; rest assured.  Unusually tuned, yes...but whole, and alive._ "

"I can feel your presence so deeply," I replied.  "So much more than I do anyone outside our family.  You especially--but it's like that with _all_ spirits.  Zash always said that my perception through the living is greatly hindered in comparison--'clouded,' to use her word.  _This_ is why, isn't it?  Because I can't fully since the living through the realm of the dead.  It's _always_ been this way for me, hasn't it?  Even before I understood that I had Force powers."  
_  
_ Lord Aloysius nodded.  " _As I said--part of your nature from the beginning, to seek the first thing you ever knew._ "

"I suppose...maybe I had to learn, when I was little, how to distinguish what was real--tangible, I mean--and what was not.  How to tell my senses what to react to and what from my spirit to filter out.  I don't remember that, but it fits everything Father told me about when I was very small.  He says I used to chase things he couldn't see.  And that when I was an infant, he even wondered if my senses were damaged from the birthing trauma.  If I could see or hear normally at all.  And as I grew up...I remember times when I would be laying on my pallet dreading the next day, or times when the overseers were shouting at me or shocking me, and I would suddenly feel strange.  _Not alone_.  Not all the way there.  I thought it was the boundary between sleeping and waking.  Or a symptom of the fear.  I suppose now that it was the way the Force was for me...a cloud of the departed gathered with me.  But you said there was even more to this.  More that Darth Zash kept from me."

" _The difficulty you have sensing others through the Force--Zash never wanted you to realize that others perceive_ you _through a fog.  The extent of your power and the truth of who you are, are veiled until they start to pay attention to their physical senses and your actions.  And even then you remain mostly obscured except to those with whom you are closest.  Those of the living that you deliberately work to attune yourself to._ "

I felt right then as if Lord Aloysius were smiling at me.  "Like Ashara."  I replied with a smile of my own.

" _Precisely, my boy!  Because you do what it takes to reach through the veil to her.  You will always be what you are.  Therefore_ you _are the only one who can create that path.  No one else can do it from the outside.  Darth Zash never wanted you to understand that about yourself, how little she could trust her own Force sight of you.  She never wanted you to understand why you are so consistently underestimated and misjudged, all the way from Overseer Harkun to the Dark Council itself.  Nor did she want you to recognize how you could use that to protect yourself, and to deceive._ "

I well remembered her shock as she first began to see me through Khem Val's eyes, bound to my crew, exposed to the way I _truly_ conducted myself rather than the facade the Academy had forced me to present.  Even _knowing_ what she did of my circumstances, knowing to ignore Harkun's dismissals of my potential...even knowing to keep her eyes and ears searching with me, she had _still_ found herself blinded to much of me in the end.  Not just my abilities--but my heresy.

"She could have used my nature to obscure who _she_ was, if she'd managed to take over my body," I realized.  "She could have _been_ me as far as the Dark Council was concerned, without their being able to distinguish who it really was.  She might have even been able to try what Darth Baras did, and falsely proclaim herself a vessel of the Emperor's will.  It would have been far harder for them to discern whether the Emperor's presence was truly there or not."  I shook my head as if to dislodge that dreadful alternate fate from my brain.  "How grateful I am to have her consciousness gone from my ship and sealed away in that mind prison.  _No one_ deserves to be enslaved from within."

" _Indeed not_ ," Lord Aloysius concurred.  " _It is well for you that you freed the spirits that you bound to you--they would have suffered within you eventually, much as you would have if Darth Zash had had her way.  Once again you chose the better path.  You know how Darth Thanaton took the slavery he despised and inflicted it on another being without a single qualm.  You chose to end the cycle with you.  Not to perpetuate it to another generation, living or dead._ "

How the account I had extracted from Thanaton's private study had repelled me--that he, who had been a slave as a boy, had taken an Abyssin man and stripped him of even the dignity of a name, reducing him to a mere 'Maggot' beneath his feet.  The mere _thought_ of doing the same was enough to make me feel physically ill.  I nodded at Lord Aloysius.  "Some _traditions_ deserve to die," I spat.  "One would think Thanaton would have grown to understand that.  But..."

Something occurred to me.  "As perverse as it is, one wonders if he lived with a twisted sort of survivor's guilt after the Dark Lord he was apprenticed to was executed for treason.  If he felt _guilty_ for somehow having the _temerity_ to receive a pardon instead of being put to death as the apprentice of a wayward master.  They saddled him with that disgrace, and even when he rose to their ranks...they gave him a permanent reminder with his name.  Thanaton--Talos says that for the ancients, that name was an embodiment of death.  A dead thing walking.  Not like myself, as someone _revived_ from death...but something that had to live under the constant reproach that it did not _deserve_ to live.  It excuses nothing," I emphasized.  "But it may...clarify some of it.  And the extent of his zeal to see me dead after Darth Zash fell."

" _Perhaps so...Imperius.  You, at least...you have a true purpose for yourself.  One that you can rightfully attach to that name_."

"To protect my people.  It's made a great difference since my accession, to have a purpose that isn't _just_ trying to survive.  That I will admit.  At least before--before the Kaggath, before being named Councillor, at least I allowed myself the will to survive.  Survival...physical, spiritual.  To be completely without purpose...I never want to be like that.  Like Thanaton."

" _You are_ not _like him.  That much you may have made clear.  Though your pasts may have been similar--_ "

"Lord Aloysius...!"

" _What is it, my son?_ "

Something else had dawned on me.  "Our pasts...they really _weren't_ that similar.  Thanaton was a boy when the Sith Academy took him.  Me...I was a man.  Nearly twenty.  This...clouding of the Force about me...is that how I went undetected for so long?"

The ancestral spirit nodded.  " _It is_."

It was the law of the Empire: every child, and in my generation even the children of slaves, were to be screened for Force sensitivity, and sent to the Sith Academy at the age when the freeborn would start primary school.  Not like the Republic, where they never saw their families again, but training was intended to begin early.  The Sith representatives had come to my master's estate when records showed I and three other slave children were of the appointed age.  And they had found nothing in us--a relief, then, not to be torn away from the life I knew.  A life with very little, yes, but I had my father...and at six year of age, that was that.

I suppose I never connected the odd things I felt time to time with the workings of the Force: the strange resonance in those places where slaves had been murdered, the sensations in the middle of the night of _not being alone_.  None of it informed my everyday life; it was merely a sensitivity of feeling brought on by privation and confinement, we all thought.  And for the longest time, there seemed no reason to question it.

Not even when I began to grow tall and our master's overseers fit a shock collar around my neck, and I began trying anything I could to withstand or counteract the pain when someone decided to administer 'discipline.'  I would tell myself the current could only wash _over_ me and flow away where it could no longer harm me.  The charges were 'light' enough to not be easily visible...not enough for the overseers or even me to realize that what I thought a simple meditation actually _did_ something in reality.  

So I continued to manhood, was apprenticed to the senior slave of the estate's smithy, my lot in life to forge and engrave handmade pieces for the highborn and the Lords of the Sith, so that my master could profit from my labor.  There could be far worse lives for slaves of the estate.  That I well knew.  The smithy, I supposed, was the pinnacle to which I could aspire, if I may abuse that word for a life bereft of choice.

For each of us slaves came one day of rest per week--the advice of some labor efficiency expert, whose job it was to review the slaveowner's operation and ensure that they received the precise, maximized lifetime value from their sentient chattel.  Not that 'rest' meant what it did to the freeborn; this was our sole opportunity to scrap together what we needed from what we could find on the estate--that the overseers would not deem as theft that week, that is.  

And _that day_...my order of business was to scrounge up dried grasses to stuff the mattresses and pillows of my father's and my pallets.  One simple errand, foraging on the edge of the shrinking arroyo as the last of the monsoon waters faded and the dry season set in.  That was it.  Yet it was on that day that everything changed.

_There--a dying sajjen-scrub, still untouched by the rot-lizards that made their living on the decay that other creatures refused.  Other creatures except the slaves, of course.  The sajjen-scrub blended in with the sandy soil, but stood out like a beacon to me nonetheless._

_Down the creek from me, a Felucian child washed a ragged tunic in the water of the arroyo.  She was new to Dromund Fels--barely three weeks a slave on a world alien to her.  The weight of the indignities, the beatings, the isolation from all she had were already draining the hope from her eyes.  I felt for her...it must have been hard to be freeborn and suddenly suffer a loss of freedom as unfathomable as her world of infinite choices was for me._

_But I had to focus.  This was all I had or would know.  And only a few hours remained to collect the sajjen-scrub before night fell.  With each step I took towards the scrub, I stomped several times as hard as I could to warn any ambitious rot-lizards that this find was mine, and they didn't stand a chance of sabotaging my claim._

_For just an instant, the ground where I stood turned black with shadow.  I looked up--still instinct even after growing too much to need the fear--_

__Aeroraptor! __

 _A vicious, gnashing beast on the wing, held aloft by hydrogen bladders, steered by wings and finned tail--except those wings were tucked now close to its cerulean body, the color of the clear desert sky..._ diving _at the Felucian child.  That fragile being--small enough to become prey, new enough not to know that on Dromund Fels the young must always_ look up _when alone in the open._

_No time to warn her, no time to close the distance, no time to hunt down a rock heavy enough to hurl at the beast--only to watch with terror as the aeroraptor's talons spread wide to scoop up an innocent girl and carry her off to its nest--flesh for the adult, bones cracked open for marrow for the raptorlets--_

_"_ NO! _"  
__  
A sudden_ crack _\--the shock front knocked her flat--the aeroraptor screeched and banked away, flapping desperately to gain altitude--_

 _I ran for the beast, flailing my arms and shouting at it, and it wheeled off into the distance, terrified the next time might be a rock or an arrow to the flight bladder, or..._ whatever _I had just done--a blast of wind with_ lightning _at the center.  The monsoon thunderhead tamed and weaponized--_

 _The Felucian girl screamed, eyes wide, darting back and forth between the sky and..._ me.  " _Sith!" she shrieked.  She scrabbled against rock, sand, spikegrass, and sajjen-scrub to_ get away _from here, from beasts that fought each other with teeth and lightning...but it wasn't just her.  It was_ me _too, breaking into a full-speed run back to the slave barracks.  For the overseers' camera would have seen, and if this was what I thought it was--if she was right, if I was somehow what she accused me of being--_

_Then there was only one answer for me under the law.  And I could not let it happen without a chance to say goodbye...!_

__In the here and now, my eyes bore deep into the lenses of Lord Aloysius' mask.  I had not gone undetected forever, even clouded in the Force as I was.  "I was almost twenty," I told him.  "The only reason the overseers didn't shock me senseless when it happened was because they were afraid I'd do what I'd just done again, and this time I would kill.  Even so--even without the physical pain, it was bad enough.  The Academy's 'recruiters' came and tore me right out of the cabin before the sun could even set that evening.  That was the last time I saw my father's face...and he was crying because so few survive the Sith Academy, and even fewer of the survivors return home..."

A tear ran down my cheek now.  "It was...the last time I saw him."  I fought to hold my voice steady.  And lost.  "I--I bought him...his freedom, when Zash made me Lord...gave him the credits to live on, and I was going to come back...but then Thanaton--he started hunting me.  I didn't know--I didn't know who else connected to me Thanaton might go after--so...I never returned.  I never made it back.  I never had the chance to show him--that I remembered.  I still loved-- _love_ him.  I never got home to really--truly say goodbye..."

Lord Aloysius held his silence for a long, pensive moment as I gathered myself the best I could.  At last the ancient Force-ghost spoke.  " _The glory of the Kalligs_ \--"  In that instant, all I wanted was to wrap my fingers right around his spectral neck.  How _dare_ he blather on about his wounded pride when my father lay dead and alone on Dromund Fels!  Then Lord Aloysius resumed.  " _The glory of the Kalligs_ ," he solemnly intoned, " _is every bit as much the glory of the Ostelins now.  Your father...he may have breathed enough life--enough_ truth _in you for an entire Empire.  Truly he was worthy, as I was not._ "

Pain gnawed deep at my spirit.  Whatever sort of oddity in the Force that I was...Lord Aloysius was right.  I was very much alive.  And the pain dug its way into my bones just as deep as it did into my soul.  Yes... _very_ much alive, in all the glory and all the suffering.  

I could no longer meet Lord Aloysius' gaze.  There was one thing I had to know, but the thought of asking--the thought of an _answer_ \--it killed me inside.  The Sith purists like Aruk and Thanaton claimed that the law of the survival of the fittest made it impossible for those they placed beneath them.  And the Jedi...the Jedi were no better.  Still...I had to know.

"Ashara says that any spirit incapable of becoming a Force-ghost simply dissipates into the sea of the Force as if it never even mattered, what made them _who they were_ ," I said.  "My father was no Sith and my mother, whatever her potential might have been, never trained to wield the Force.  Did they just...fade into nothing?  Just... _end_?  Or are they still _there_ somehow, if I search hard enough?  If I must be 'Master of the Dead,' I would seek only that one thing--"

Lord Aloysius never moved.  But I felt the intensity of his focus on me nonetheless.  " _Tarssus...this mystery is beyond even_ your _sight_ ," he replied.  " _And there is no way for me to prove it to you in your living state: for only those who have trained in the Force and carved a pathway in it by their passion between here and there, just as you create the path for the living Force of those you love to find you through the mist, may prove their continuance to the living as I do.  And you, without the effort and suffering it costs most Sith, will be able to show yourself as well._

 __" _But try to think of this, my dear boy.  Do you think you would have become as you are by trying to follow a mere_ nothingness _to the other side?  What could possibly_ compel _that so strongly that it overrode the survival instinct of the flesh?  And do you think there would be so much to cloud you from the Force-sight of the living if only a few Force-users had ever transcended?  That, Tarssus, is the only proof I can offer you.  I can only be truthful.  But I can hope that truth might be enough._ "

So there was hope.  That much I resolved to take from Lord Aloysius' enigmatic proclamation: some sort of hope, that amidst the cloud of _otherness_ drawn across me was not a mere echo, but the _truth_ and _fullness_ of my mother and father, the promise that we would in some deep and meaningful way actually meet again as being to being.

I barely heard as Lord Aloysius said to me, " _There is another message, a caution I came to bring you as well.  It is about one of the companions of Rûmaz, the Emperor's Wrath, that you will soon meet..._ "

For in the space of that one wild, sacred moment, I knew that whatever might come, there truly was some sort of hope within the mist.  
__

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soundtrack: ["Believe"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KV9ZCWdvXf4) by Elton John, ["The Commonwealth"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tO-JdwPgSNk), ["Wandering - The City, Part 2"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44nmZuJa9sM), and ["Of the People, for the People"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fii_59d9Cnc) by Inon Zur


	4. The Dust Beneath My Feet

The _Fury_ barely even shuddered as the landing feet touched down on the tarmac at Imperial Reclamation Service Base Aurek on Dromund Fels--not just thanks to Andronikos Revel's superb piloting, but the completely seamless transition from ship to planetary gravity that only occurred just so when returning to home port.  True, the _Fury_ had never set down upon Dromund Fels before this, but for as long as the interceptor had been under my command, all its environmental parameters had matched the world of my birth.  
  
The ship's engines spun down as the _Fury_ switched over to battery power, but even so, the transport did not fall fully silent: no Dark Councillor, not even a heretic such as myself, would be fool enough to switch off the atmospheric recyclers even in an ostensibly friendly port lest someone try to have us draw in contaminated air through the intakes.  We had cycled our air at altitude instead, though, so it had still begun to smell just a bit like home aboard the _Fury_.  Like dust and a hint of monsoon moisture on the air, and pollen drifted in from the regions already in their ever so temporary bloom.  
  
Home: the edges of the Great Inland Desert of Dromund Fels' single gargantuan continent, where the great beasts of the coastal lands lacked the lush jungles and forests they needed to thrive, but enough grass and brush remained to sustain smaller creatures--humans and the like.  Oh, there were still threats--the aeroraptor, for one--but to venture into the deeper deserts...it wasn't impossible, but only the hardiest did that, and only on the backs of expendable slaves, who might find themselves left to die if the Sith Lord or highborn in charge decided they were no longer worth the cost in resources and upkeep, versus the output of their labors.  And there were formulae for that in the Empire, of course, scientifically precise...  
  
So much anguish in the sands and the scrubs...and yet...less than it could have been for me, I thought, recalling the faces of an unfortunate Dug family my former master sold for such an 'inland expedition.'  Their fate remained unknown, but easily assumed by those of us who gave a damn.  As for me...I had been fortunate somehow.  Fortunate enough to stay in one place, to be selected for the forge instead of the fields, fortunate enough to have been taught to read and write to manage the science and mathematics of a future master smith.  
  
And fortunate, above all, to have known my father all the way until the day the Sith Academy came for me.  
  
It was for that gratitude that, even late as I was, I had to return.  And for that, that even with all I had suffered here, the arid sajjen-scrubs of Dromund Fels were still _home_.  
  
The light of the Dromund star--which I had never seen unfiltered by clouds while visiting my homeworld's stormy sister world of Dromund Kaas--streamed in unrestrained through the cockpit window, which looked out upon a spotless blue sky.  Base crews waited outside at a respectful distance; the transport of a Dark Councillor would not drop its shields until he... _I_...gave the word.  Not that they could see in; the windows were polarized against that.  
  
I turned to Andronikos, who leaned back in the pilot's chair.  "Well done," I told him.  
  
"Thanks, boss," said the Republic-born pirate-turned-pilot.  Most Dark Councillors wouldn't have tolerated the impertinence.  Me...I didn't mind.  It reminded me that it was still just _me_ wearing the robes of a Dark Lord of the Sith, whether I was Tarssus Kallig, Darth Imperius...or just boss.  As long as Andronikos watched his mouth in public where it could get us _all_ in serious trouble, then I was content to let it be.  
  
Speaking of what transpired in public, though...it had to be asked.  "I realize it won't be much of a stopover," I said, "but I suppose you're planning a bit of a night out on the town?"  
  
Andronikos flashed a sly grin.  "You've got it, boss."  The grin vanished for a moment.  "That is, unless you're needing me for something?  I'm not much good with...um...family stuff--haven't got any real roots I've ever actually bothered to tend to..."  
  
"I do appreciate your asking," I replied, and I meant it.  Though I hadn't forgotten Lord Aloysius' remark that our association would not likely be for the long term, I had my hopes that in his case, ours would be an amicable parting when the time came.  Perhaps he'd finally settle down with one woman...though truthfully, I had a feeling the first formal marriage on the crew would be Talos, who would probably find a suitable bachelor _long_ before Revel even _thought_ of committing.  "But no.  There really isn't much I can think of that we haven't already got sorted.  And you _have_ earned a rest.  My one bit of advice to you would be to avail yourself to the base cantina if you plan to enjoy some drink.  You'll have full privileges there as my personal pilot, of course, though _not_ an infinite bar tab, mind you."  
  
I'd shaded that last with a faint hint of a smile, but still, all I got from Andronikos was a desultory grumble.  "Ehh...maybe.  All those _officers_ around... _those_ ladies tend to be a bunch of real stuffed shirts, _especially_ in the Empire."  
  
If looks alone could shoot Force-lightning, the glare Talos aimed into the back of Andronikos' head right then would have rivaled anything his biological brother Lord Typhon could ever produce.  Before Talos could comment, I interjected.  "First off, I would not recommend the term 'stuffed shirts' as part of _anything_ resembling a pick-up line for a multitude of reasons, not in the least that it might earn you a blaster stock to the face.  And second...I would strongly advise _not_ trying the cantina scene in town.  The cantina on base has standards.  The ones in town--they let _any_ sort of lowlife in there, and by that I mean _slavers_."  
  
"Yeah, yeah...you got a point there," Andronikos conceded.  "Smuggling--stealing--bounty hunting--all that's just making a living, fine and dandy, but _slaving_?  You'd be hauling my ass outta jail if I pegged one of _those_ scumbags.  That's the one thing I never could take about the Empire...no offense, sir."  
  
"The only offense I'd take is if you started _tolerating_ it," I assured him.  "But as much as I would _dearly_ love your regaling me with tales of how you put a few of those walking midden heaps in the infirmary..."  
  
"Damn politics," Andronikos groused with enough venom for the both of us.  "Can't have that all over the HoloNet, not at a time like this.  Even as much as it _needs_ to be all over the HoloNet.  Got it, boss--I'll stick to the O-Club this time."  
  
"Very well, then.  Make sure you leave 2V with any supply requisitions for your area before you leave; he won't have long to place the order, so if you need something that can't wait until our next port of call, you'd best tell him now."  
  
"Will do, Darth."  Andronikos offered a loose salute and turned to the corridor towards the crew quarters.  I followed not long after; there were a few stops I had to make before we left.  
  
The first was the aforementioned droid and ship's quartermaster, 2V-R8, who was shuffling down the hall with a dust sweeper in hand.  " _Greetings, my lord!_ " he exclaimed upon seeing me.  " _I would have had this sweeping completed half an hour ago, but the dust does tend to accumulate rather rapidly in port--_ "  
  
"And I was the one who ordered an in-atmosphere air cycling, so do rest your circuits about that," I replied.  "Sometimes the benefits of planetary air outweigh the other inconveniences for us organics, psychologically speaking.  I trust, though, that you haven't experienced any undue difficulty with the ship or your own inner workings?"  
  
The quartermaster shook his head, an organic affectation he'd been utilizing more of late.  " _Everything is well within parameters, sir.  And I've taken the liberty of completing the requisition list as I've made my rounds.  Pending any final emendations from the crew, I'm prepared to transmit at earliest convenience._ "  
  
"Sometimes I envy your sort of multitasking," I remarked.  To imagine a part of me able to carry on as if nothing whatsoever had happened, sorting out all my tasks in the world with the same efficiency as before, all the while leaving the rest of myself fully dedicated to finding some way to navigate my new life--a life of power, paranoia...and without the man who had raised me, and whom I had _promised_ I would see again--an impossible dream.  I could only handle one at a time.  So I forced myself back into the moment at hand.  "The crew are aware of the deadline for requisitions.  Once that's past, you'll have my leave to place the order.  And don't forget..."  This time I smiled a bit.  This, at least, might give me some small thing to look forward to in the midst of all my solemn duties. "You have _your_ allotment as well, 2V.  As long as it's something any other crew member would be allowed aboard ship, then it's yours."  
  
" _My lord?_ "  2V looked me square in the eyes, if I interpreted his mannerisms properly.  And after all this time, I was quite sure I was.  " _I'm afraid I'm obliged to remind you that Imperial law does not permit droids to own property--_ "  
  
"Oh, _right_ , because they think _you're_ property.  Tell me, 2V...since when have I cared what they think I should do where you're concerned?"  This time I smiled.  _Really_ smiled.  "'A Sith does what a Sith wants,' after all."  
  
" _My duty is discharged, then_."  A matter of programming that, unfortunately, still compelled the droid to say what he had.  But this was progress: he would not have dispensed with formality--and paralyzing fear--so quickly when we first met.  
  
I nodded.  "On _this_ ship, you are quartermaster, not inventory.  And whatever you choose for yourself, consider it yours.  I admit, though...I shall be quite curious to see your choice.  Not as your lord...simple curiosity."  To push 2V-R8 to further express preferences, make decisions--all of these little assertions of self were another step, I hoped, towards finding out just how much he was truly capable of.  
  
" _Very much understood, sir.  The requisition will be placed tonight_."  
  
"I expect you to be accorded full respect.  You'll tell me if any of the merchants gives you difficulty?"  
  
" _Of course, my lord._ "  
  
"Right, then.  Thank you, 2V...I appreciate it."  The quartermaster nodded and turned back to his work...and I towards the destination I looked least forward to aboard ship.  
  
I pressed the chime on the door to the small room Khem Val had claimed as his own, steeling myself as I always did for the encounter with the hulking Dashade easily at least twice my mass.  " _What is it?_ " growled Khem's voice in Dashadi over the comm.  
  
"This is Imperius," I shot back with equal terseness.  "I will speak with you."  
  
The door swished open without further ado.  The Dashade held the social niceties of the 'smaller' species in contempt; I had learnt over time not to bother.  " _You wanted something, Master?_ "  
  
How I loathed that title.  But Khem, unlike 2V, would not be convinced otherwise, even though I had told him in no uncertain terms that he owed me nothing other than by his own choice.  "I came to let you know that if you wish, you have the opportunity for shore leave."  
  
The Dashade snorted.  " _There are no games on this planet.  No_ true _games of warrior spirit and blood.  And the main event will be worthless; the carcass of a dead Forceless is of no interest to me_."  
  
_The carcass of a dead Forceless_ \--by _that_ he meant--  
  
A million raging shouts flooded through my brain--some in Basic, some in the Dashadi tongue that my limited human vocal apparatus would never let me render in its layered harmonics and subharmonics.  Instead, I glared directly into Khem Val's eyes, bared my teeth...and _growled_.  
  
" _Do you jest with the traditions of Urkupp, Little Sith_?" Khem Val snarled, lacing his words with their own subharmonic rumble.  
  
I could not retort verbally in Dashadi--instead, I took one step forward, hand extended, clawlike, displayed centimeters from my weapon.  I growled again--deeper, louder this time.  I may not have had the dread assassin's vocal versatility, but for my kind I _was_ capable of hitting quite the low frequency.  I stood my ground, kept the noise up, blocking from my mind the insanity it would have suggested to anyone else if they had seen, my eyes drilling straight into Khem's and into the back of the Dashade's skull, or so it felt.  
  
Finally, Khem Val flinched, released a baleful snort, head twisting to the side, dipped for a fleeting second.  I had won, for now.  
  
" _It is..._ almost _a pity you cannot speak when you give challenge, young human_ ," the Dashade offered in a cryptic sort of concession.  " _Yet you still manage something halfway credible despite your slight frame._ "  
  
"Not so frail that I will stand an insult from you to my father's honor," I shot back.  "I did not _jest_ with your traditions, Khem Val.  And I knew what I placed at stake by giving challenge.  The funeral of a father, whether he wielded the Force or not, is _sacred_ to this Sith.  Come, or stay aboard--either will suit me, so long as you do not jest with _my_ traditions, especially where my family is concerned."  
  
" _It is well for you that you command the Force as deftly as you do, Lord of the Sith, else I would have drained it from your small frame by now.  Perhaps the Force itself intercedes where the body is frail but the will is strong, and paves a way for life where there should have been none._ "  I suppressed a shudder: there seemed far more to his pronouncement than the present.  Had he known my full nature all along?  Had he gleaned it from Lord Zash, perhaps, before I expelled her from his mind?  Better not to ask and in doing so confirm any suspicions he might have had.  " _I shall remain aboard.  It is prudent to maintain a guard in your absence, Master of the Dead_."  
  
Now I was almost _sure_ of it.  But I gave no hint of it.  "That would be prudent," I replied instead.  "My business here is concluded."  And following the Dashadi custom, I turned my back and stalked out of the room with no further ado.  
  
I waited until I was well down the corridor to release my breath in one long belated sigh.  
  
At least, that was the _intent_.  Instead, my back instinctively straightened as I nearly ran into Xalek, who had made his way down the corridor in complete and utter stealth.  "My lord," the masked Kaleesh apprentice greeted me with a slight bow of the head.  "A word if you please."  
  
I nodded, unsure what this could be.  "Of course."  
  
"Your father--his spirit travels to the ancestors.  But the people of your world constrained the extent of his deeds as the Empire once did with me.  There is much parting-sorrow in this."  
  
Very much unlike Khem Val, Xalek's tone was low, reverential.  So I replied, "I...ah...accept your condolences, Xalek."  
  
"There is more I wish to give than that," Xalek clarified.  "Only a warrior may become a god.  But a man like your father can still show the ancestors that he is worthy of other honors and comforts of paradise.  He shows this by the warriors who accompany him to the grave.  He has sired the head of a clan of warriors, and that is worthy of praise.  But I can show the ancestors that he has earned an honor guard outside your clan as well. You gave me leave to honor my own father. I would repay you--if you would allow."  
  
How the dead dealt with each other beyond the limits of my sight, I did not know, and Lord Aloysius had made it more than clear that asking further questions where the non-Force-wielders were concerned would get me nowhere beyond the assurances in which he asked me to place my trust.  Of the Force-sensitive dead, I knew from those who could manifest that they retained their personalities, even after and _especially_ after being made whole in the Light.  That said...I hadn't gained a sense from any of them that they ordered their afterlives according to the Kaleesh traditional notions, and that rush of Light that had run through me turned my heart against the idea of any sort of high places for vengeance-filled spirits who knew no solace _._  
  
Still, I said none of this to Xalek.  There would be other moments where I might be able to share some hints with him as to what it was like to walk among spirits and to feel the ripples of each sort of presence through the Force.  But for right now, the more important thing I felt was to encourage my official apprentice's regard for another.  "The ritual will not be Kaleesh," I told him.  "It will be performed by the...clan, to use your word.  But it is important to me that outsiders not be allowed to trespass during the preparations, or the ritual proper.  The offer of a guard is accepted with gratitude, Apprentice."  
  
Xalek dipped his head once more, deeper this time.  "It will be done, my lord."  
  
He made it sound so simple.  
  
For me, it would be anything but.  
  
  
  
"That's the last signature," Talos declared.  "Everything is transferred into your name.  Ordinarily in the absence of a will a judge would be required to grant legal force to this, but the Dark Council's authority sits above that of any judge.  Your authority is enough unto itself."  
  
Though technically it was Darth Mortis--the Dark Lord who had delivered the final deathblow to Thanaton--who ruled the Sphere of Laws and Justice, my brother's statement...unthinkable as it still was to me...was true enough.  Each of us was theoretically equal in power, second only to the Emperor and the direct instruments of his will.  So, following the protocol Talos had discovered in his research, my own signature stood alone: _Darth Imperius_.  
  
How bitter a taste that left in my mouth, that this was how I had to fulfill my duty to my father, without even the name he had given me.  Legally, that was all I had in the wake of my accession.  But in the hidden places, where no foreign ears could hear, I still knew better.  
  
Now that the formalities were completed, what was left to me was to venture to another hidden place--except this one I had never known until now.  Talos and I rose in unison, exiting the secured office in the Gerasnishqât district administrative center, where almost immediately, we were greeted by the sight of the greying human functionary in the lobby scrambling to kneel at my feet.  
  
I forced myself to maintain as impassive an expression as Talos at this obsequious...and unfortunately deeply traditional if not legally required...display of fealty towards me as Dark Councillor.  Still, I put an end to it as quickly as the same traditions would allow, raising the palm of my hand and giving the order: "Rise."  
  
The elderly man, to whom a part of me still felt _I_ ought to be paying respect, grasped onto the edge of his desk and pulled himself with a wince to his feet.  I averted my gaze until he'd regained a steady footing.  "Was everything to your satisfaction, my lord?"  
  
I nodded.  Not that _satisfaction_ was the word I would have used to describe the logistics of settling my father's affairs, but it wouldn't have done any of us any good to point that out.  "Everything is complete.  Do see that it is expedited and logged immediately and kept in the utmost confidence.  We will be returning to Soisûn right away to go through the estate and..."  I felt my voice catch ever so slightly, though I'm not sure the administrator noticed, or _allowed_ himself to notice.  "To claim the body."  
  
He acknowledged with a much slighter bow from the waist this time.  "It will be as you command.  Will you require an escort to the speeder deck?"  
  
Though I hadn't felt the ripple through the Force that I'd come to associate with impending death grasping at the boundaries of life, Lord Aloysius' warnings were still fresh in my mind.  I knew the boundaries of my Force sense of the living--better in my case, counterintuitive as it might seem, if anyone _did_ approach us with ill intent, I would be more likely to discern it with only the familiar aura of Talos at immediate proximity.  "That will not be necessary," I assured the functionary.  "We can find the way."  
  
I wasn't sure if I was imagining the faint sigh of relief as we turned to take our leave...but I would certainly have believed it.  The truth was, the feeling was mutual, though I could never allow the general populace to realize that I often felt just as much relief to shed my Dark Lord persona as they did at realizing that said Dark Lord had moved on from their lives without incident.  I suppose it felt a bit more natural to Talos, having been born to an influential non-Force-wielding family, but surely this _had_ to exceed even the highest obeisances given to the Drellik family.  _Strange_ , I thought to myself, _that in the Empire, both the lowest_ and _the highest have to master the art of disguising themselves to ensure their survival._  
  
It wasn't much of a trip to my landspeeder given that I'd used the VIP parking nearest the entrance.  Well, technically it was my landspeeder, but I thought of it as Talos', or whichever of my crew were driving.  Driving wasn't exactly a skill my master had cared to foster in his slaves, particularly one of his more educated slaves, and in the wake of my arrival at the Sith Academy and everything else that had transpired, I hadn't exactly had the time to learn.  
  
That could wait for now.  For the moment I was content to take advantage of the opportunity to relax as the we cleared the city center and Talos set our course through the high desert for which the ancient Sith had named the Gerasnishqât district, and headed towards the town of Soisûn...my birthplace.  
  
I couldn't hold it in anymore.  "The last time I saw Soisûn, I expected I would live my life and die there," I said over the whirring of the landspeeder's engine.  
  
"That must make it hard to return," Talos commented, "having been a slave there."  
  
"To return to my former master's estate...that would be.  And I am thankful that won't be necessary.  But returning to Dromund Fels?  To Soisûn itself?"  I shook my head.  "No.  This is my world...this is the air I breathed, the water I drank.  This is my home."  
  
"There was a time when I never wanted to see my home again," Talos reflected.  "When I was on poor terms with my family, and I had got out into the galaxy on my first archaeological dig.  That was the first time I had ever truly left the world of the sub-aristocracy and saw things outside of all the pageantry of Kaas City, and all the other rarefied places in the Empire that my father considered fit for the Drellik lineage.  When I struck out on my own, joined the Imperial Reclamation Service, that's when I saw the galaxy as it really was."   
  
My brother fell silent for a moment.  "Do pardon the digression," he said after a while.  "The point I meant to make is this: home has become rather more fond to me in recent years, now that my family and I have reconciled, though it wasn't always.  This place, though...it never has left your heart, has it?  Not even for a time..."  
  
I shook my head.  "It's part of what kept me going through the worst of everything Thanaton did...the thought that someday I might come back here as a free man.  There were a few things that I was able to do along the way to help my father, and maybe some of the other people I grew up with.  But I'd hoped to make it back sooner than this.  And with things to look _forward_ to, instead of nothing left but to look _behind_ and wonder what could have been."  
  
I too fell into a pensive silence as the vast panoramas of sandstone and scrub sailed by under a great expanse of sky dotted by clouds that faintly reflected shades of terracotta back to the surface.  "The hardest goodbye is the one you never had a chance to say."  
  
Talos was always the one with something witty to say to cheer the worst of situations.  But now, he held his tongue...for there was nothing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Soundtrack** : ["Rebuild, Renew"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTwOhefBee4) and[ "Wandering - The Foothills, Part 1"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaZ_8MNLVe0) by Inon Zur


	5. The Blood and the Stars

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Author's Note:** While I didn't feel it merited marking "Mature," there is a slightly graphic depiction of a Sith death ritual. Please note that while it suits Tarssus and the mindset and culture to which he belongs, I do not support carrying it into our world.

We arrived in Soisûn with neither incident nor fanfare.  This was as I would have it: I had given no announcement of my visit, called for no honor guard.  I wore a rough-woven charcoal grey sleeved cloak made of the same light sort of linen an ordinary freeman would wear.  With the hooks fastened across the chest, it would hide my saber and the distinct patterns of my robes from view, and at least partially shield my diadem from sight.  But not completely.  That was the one thing I hoped no one would notice, though I dared not remove it--not just for the protective spells imbued within, but for what it represented to me.  
  
Blood.  Loyalty.  Remembrance.  
  
I traced my way down the central road towards an abode in which I had never lived.  There would be no memories here to give me solace...no, those lay back at my former master's estate, not for any benevolence shown to me by the ones who claimed title upon my life, but for the knowledge, however cobbled together, of what it meant to have a family.  No...where Talos and I now went held only the echoes of experiences unwoven.  And that felt infinitely worse.  
  
"It'll be down the next road," Talos said, nodding at the turnoff to the right.  
  
I had only ever been into this neighborhood via holo during my preparations for my father's manumission.  My means had been relatively modest then, even though I'd just been made a Sith Lord, but I was pleased to note that just as the promotional holos had promised, the row of small adobe homes was well kept, some with manicured little tufts of drought-tolerant grasses, others with tended gardens of rocks.  Nor had the adobe walls or terracotta roof tiles been allowed to fall into disrepair.  
  
I allowed myself that sigh of relief, at least: it may have been a far cry from the sprawling estate where our onetime owners had lived...and, which it still confounded me to recall, that I could now easily afford many times over.  But this place had _also_ been a drastic improvement over the ramshackle barracks where I had grown up--"pens," as they were derisively called for the vicious electrified fences that kept us in at night.  This was no pen.  This, at least, _had_ been a home.  
  
"Here," Talos indicated, breaking me out of my reverie.  "My apologies...I didn't mean to startle you."  
  
"I don't think you could have helped it," I muttered.  
  
Before Talos could work out some sort of response, something caught his keen eye.  "Huh... _that's_ rather odd."  He pointed towards my father's house.  "I'd been under the impression the home would be vacant.  But look--there's a pair of shoes just outside the doorway.  Women's, if I'm not mistaken.  Is it customary on Dromund Fels to remove your shoes before entering a dwelling?"  
  
"We didn't observe that custom in the barracks," I said.  "Too much risk of stepping on a splinter on the floor, or a _kulkat_ -scorpion or some other vermin that had got inside.  But actual homes, like this?  Yes."  My senses of the living felt particularly dulled as we drew closer.  It wasn't hard to discern why...recent death.   _That_ resonated far more strongly in the Force here than anything else I could ever hope to detect, save the presence of my living brother.  "What does your scanner tell you?"  
  
Never one to leave the tools of his trade behind, Talos withdrew the device from a pocket.  "One heat signature, consistent with a warm-blooded humanoid."  
  
I pushed my awareness through the Force as best I could.  Something rippled through the miasma that permeated the home--something living in the stiller energies that marked the place where someone had made the transition from the living to the dead.  
  
Two thoughts arose simultaneously.  
  
_Not likely a Force-wielder, whoever they are.  
  
Father died_ here _...in this home._  
  
I only gave voice, however, to the first.  
  
"Shall we try it, then?" Talos asked.  
  
I knew better than to write off any sentient being simply because he--or she, in this case--held no power over the Force.  Still...something felt calm, settled, for lack of better words: just one of those sensations through the Force that eluded description.  
  
I announced my decision.  "Let's go."  
  
We made our way up the path to the front door, and I rang the buzzer.  It wasn't log before the door swung open and--  
  
"Is that--"  
  
"Kenosa?"  
  
" _Tarssus?_ "  
  
"Aunt Keena!"  
  
I pushed forward, just across the threshold, and pulled the older woman into my arms.  
  
Older--barely sixty, in truth, but as it was with lifelong slaves, she had lived the sort of life that etched itself across one's face.  
  
As we separated from our embrace, I took stock of Kenosa--Aunt Keena, as she'd been to me since I'd first learnt to speak.  She smiled, but that smile warred with tears that spilled from blue eyes tinged indigo, across cheek hued a faint pink not with blood but pigment, like the monsoon-rose.  She was human, for all intents and purposes, but the tinting of her skin, her eyes, and hair--a dark auburn that would otherwise have greyed by now--likely spoke of a Sith Pureblood slavemaster's generations-old 'indiscretion,' the evidence of which he needed only sell away.  A tidy bargain, I'm sure he would have thought: instant absolution and a profit off his own blood, to boot.  And there, of course, was the other reason the slaveborn had no surnames--all the easier to obscure the lineage of any slave whose background might lead to unpleasant questions for their owner or seller.  The slave-owning class, after all, had the influence to bribe the right functionaries to prevent the release of their genetic records for a paternity or maternity test.  
  
But there was something absent now, when I looked at Kenosa, compared to the image of when I'd last seen her: the shock collar was gone.  I dared to hope.  "You're free?"  
  
Kenosa nodded.  "It happened the month after you freed your father.  There have been others since then.  Mostly the older ones, like myself--but that never happened before you and Serren."  She studied me for a moment.  "You had something to do with it, didn't you?"  
  
I allowed myself a hint of a vicious grin.  "I might have _strongly hinted_ after I freed Father that I would take my revenge on every generation of _their_ family for what they did to every generation of _mine_ , if they didn't take it upon themselves to start transitioning to a slavery-free business model at once."  
  
Kenosa stared deeper into my eyes.  "And would you have done it?  All of them--even the children?"  
  
I released a slow, solemn sigh.  "I would have made the older ones _believe_ it."  
  
Relief settled across Kenosa's body.  "It _is_ still you."  
  
I knew what she meant.  I nodded.  "I've come home."  
  
Talos and I followed Kenosa into the main room and she shut the door behind us.  "Talos, this is Kenosa.  She looked after the slave children on the estate when our parents were working and we were too young to work or to be trained...though truthfully, that's quite the oversimplification of what she did.  She didn't just mind us--she told us stories, she treated us when we were sick or hurt, she made us toys out of scraps to play with when the overseers and masters weren't looking.  She just...tried to carve out some little space that was a bit better than the rest of our world."  
  
"Honored to meet you," Talos replied, somehow making the bow of an aristocrat into a genuine tribute to to the inner nobility of Kenosa, rather than the derisive sarcasm the gesture usually appeared as in the eyes of the slaveborn.  
  
"Same...and who are you?"  
  
"Talos Drellik, advisor to the Councillor of the Sphere of Ancient Knowledge--formerly of the Imperial Reclamation Service," he couldn't help adding.  "And sworn as brother to Darth Imperius."  
  
"It's all right here," I assured him, sotto voce.  
  
"To Tarssus Kallig," he corrected.  
  
Kenosa mulled all of that over.  "Your _brother_...and Tarssus _Kallig_...was that--was that what Serren's last name should have been?"  
  
I shook my head.  "According to the sp--that is, the _sources_ I've consulted, Father's surname should have been 'Ostelin.'  He wasn't from the Kallig line."  I hadn't been able to avoid wincing when I'd almost let slip the word 'spirits.'  Kenosa didn't need to know that now; doubtless the rumors of my affinity with the Force-wielding dead had reached the towns of Dromund Fels by now, but I couldn't think of a poorer, more unsettling time to allude to the fact with Aunt Keena than now.  "'Kallig' was the name that would have been Mother's.  I found that out early on in my apprenticeship, so I took it on as my own."  I tapped the diadem with my fingertips.  "The artifact I forged this from, and my saber, came from an ancient Kallig."  
  
"I see...Serren _Ostelin_..." Kenosa muttered to herself, then stared off into the distance.  I left her the comfort of her silence.  Then she looked up at Talos and me, and said, "He always kept faith in you, that you truly would come home."  
  
_Even though many who go to the Sith never do_ , I silently added.  
  
I drew in a deep, steadying breath through my nose.  "I meant it to be much sooner than this," I said.  "Darth Thanaton of the Dark Council was after me.  If I had let on what Father truly meant to me, he would have come here.  He would have taken Father--slain him, because of me.  I had thought that by keeping my silence while Thanaton hunted me, that I was giving Father a chance.  But because I _didn't_ come home he--"  
  
That did it.  I couldn't finish my sentence.  
  
"You had nothing to do with it," Talos tried to reassure me.  "You didn't cause this--you _couldn't_ have."  
  
"I didn't _cause_ it, no," I muttered, hollow.  "You're right about _that_ much.  But if I had known what was happening, if I had been here, or if I'd at least been able to _call_ , I could have found out.  I could have convinced him it was all right to get the treatments he needed.  He might not have suffered so.  And he might still _be here_."  
  
Talos' brow furrowed, though his tone remained gentle.  "Do forgive me, Tarssus...but my understanding was that your father's condition could have been resolved by routine medical treatments.  Was there something else I was unaware of--some complication, or some other sort of trouble...?"  
  
I understood what Talos tactfully implied: that perhaps Father had suffered from some other malady as well, an imbalance, an addiction, perhaps, that had troubled his mind as well as his body.  Something that made at least _some_ twisted sort of sense in the world of the freeborn.  But that hadn't been it at all.  " _Slaves_ ," I informed Talos, unable to keep the bitterness out of my voice, "most often do not have the _luxury_ of the same standard of medical care to which a true citizen of the Empire is entitled, unless their master is feeling particularly benevolent.  Even the free 'alien' populations can seek help from droids, or at specialized medcenters, that generally provide the same sort of care I'm sure you have always been accustomed to.  The best hope except for the most fortunate of us is to be seen by someone like Kenosa--a fellow slave who has learnt certain healing arts...first aid, midwifery, and the like.  Some slaveowners formally authorize it--others at least turn a blind eye; it keeps the costs down, after all."  
  
" _No doctors_ for slaves?  I never imagined--that's just barbaric.  But surely your father could have seen a doctor since he'd been freed...?"  
  
Kenosa spoke up.  "He could have," she confirmed.  "And I tried to convince him of that, once I realized that what he had was skin cancer.  At least, it _started_ there."  
  
Melanoma.  The first time I'd ever seen a medical droid at the Sith Academy on Korriban, he had warned me of that, and practically _insisted_ that a being of my pallor start receiving preventive skin treatments at once.  I had been fortunate as a blacksmith's apprentice not to spend anywhere near the time my father, born every bit as pale as me, had been made to work outside directly under the light of the Dromund sun.  My first thought was to resist the unsolicited advice attack, not fully understanding then what the droid was talking about.  But terrified that _any_ potential weakness, including burning too quickly in the Korriban sun, might give Harkun or Ffon Althe and the other acolytes an opening to destroy me, I'd been in no mood to argue with the droid.  And so I'd begun the treatment process that for as long as I survived everything _else_ about being Sith, would at least spare me the insidious sort of death my father had suffered.  
  
"But he wasn't having any of it," Kenosa continued.  "I was the only healer--such as I am--that he wasn't terrified of.  I have access to more supplies than I had as a slave, but all I could really do for him was to try and make him more comfortable."  
  
"And _be there_ ," I rasped even as yet another knot formed in my throat.  
  
"It seems such a waste," Talos half-whispered.  Then my brother caught himself.  "Not to speak poorly of your efforts, mind you.  It's rather the thought of... _whatever_ it is, that could have caused such mistrust."  
  
I knew Kenosa's gentleness well.  But I also knew the set of her jaw as she listened to Talos' words, that act of tightly-suppressed indignation that every slave learned well in order to survive.  And as much as it disgusted and _grieved_ me to speak this truth, I sensed right then that I ought to be the one to speak it, not her.  But there was something else that needed to be said first.  It felt so strange to be in this position, considering all the times Talos had guided me out of potentially mine-laden social situations with the upper classes I had suddenly been thrown into.  
  
I looked the woman who now represented the closest link to my past, deep in her indigo eyes.  "Aunt Keena...please forgive my brother," I said.  "I suppose you've deduced by now that he is highborn.  But he's not the sort who looks down on anyone for their birth.  There are simply things he doesn't know.  As for this..."  
  
I turned back to Talos, taking a deep breath.  It hardly helped, considering what I had to explain.  "It is not that there are _no_ medcenters at all, that see to slaves.  It is rather that a far more apt term for most of them would be _veterinary clinic_.  When it is no longer considered _worth the expense_ to treat a slave--well, I'm certain you can well imagine the range of options their master might feel himself entitled to take at that point, once their _property_ has outlived its usefulness.  Hence the decision on the part of many slaves to take the time they have left, on their own terms, and to show no weakness in front of the freeborn until the day they die.  It's as I told Darth Zash once.  It takes a slave the spirit of a Sith to endure."  
  
Talos simply stared back, his eyes wide as galaxies.  I shook my head.  "I'm sorry, Talos.  It's not you.  It's simply... _that_ is the fear we always had to live with in the slave pens.  I learnt to overcome it because I was thrust at nineteen years of age into a situation where I was forced to do so.  But the longer you live with a fear...the harder it is to overcome, even when forced.  If I had been able to make contact, if I had been able to come home...I could have gone with him--I could have offered him the protection of a Sith Lord-- _his son_ \--at his side, and maybe then...it would have been enough..."  
  
" _Damn_ Thanaton," Talos growled.  "It was him.   _He_ was the murderer."  
  
I understood what my older brother was trying to tell me.  But I could not yet make myself _feel_ it.  
  
"Forgive me.  Both of you."  I sighed.  "I...suppose I had better get on with this."  
  
Kenosa collected herself as well, nodding at me and Talos both.  "Serren asked that the house be left to Rajjar."  
  
"He's been freed as well?"  The old Rattataki slave had been the master smith assigned to train me in his craft until the Sith came for me.  He had been a strict instructor--but fair, and by far the better of any of the Overseers of the Sith Academy.  Aside from my father, it was Rajjar I had to thank for modeling a better sort of instructional technique, that did not reflect the brutal manner of the Academy.  
  
Aunt Keena smiled.  "About a year ago," she confirmed.  "Our former master had been riding him twice as hard to compensate for the Academy taking you--but he rethought that pretty fast after you freed your father.  I have to imagine it was Rajjar he was thinking of first when you warned him what you might do if he didn't start freeing his slaves.  That said," Kenosa continued, her cheery tone fallen away once more, "it's been far harder for him than it was for me, to find a job that pays well enough for him to keep a roof over his head.  No one with positions of any real worth wants an old alien on the payroll when there are plenty of humans on the job market, and even the odd Sith hybrid like me, whose blood is too diluted to have the Force.  Rajjar's been staying in a boardinghouse in the Uzsien Quarter most of this time.  It's all he can afford."  
  
_The Alien Quarter_ , once one translated the name out of the ancient Sith.  I didn't have to say a word for Kenosa to read the disgust on my face: there was nothing like wearing the same sort of shock collar as everyone else to demonstrate the utter folly of acting as though humans and Purebloods were somehow of greater worth than the rest.  "Father's house is currently under my name," I informed her.  "I would be honored to turn it over to Rajjar.  Please have him contact me in the next few days to arrange the transfer; I'll give you my official holocomm channel, but I'll let 2V know to flag the call for me as important.  And I may be able to help the employment situation as well.  I believe I have a lead on freelancing opportunities for the Imperial Reclamation Service, for someone familiar with bladesmithing and armoring.  Expert eyes are always welcomed in researching artifacts and there aren't that many people outside the Sith Order these days with practical experience at the forge.  I can ensure that his qualifications are not overlooked.  And speaking of work at the forge..."  Another idea took shape in my mind, one that might help Rajjar cover some of his other expenses and lay up a healthy nest egg for the future.  "I don't know if he has any of my old works, but if he does, I would be most pleased to certify them for him, to put on the collectors' market.  I'm sure they would fetch him a respectable price."  
  
"Right, then, I'll be sure to pass that along," Kenosa said.  "Have you given a thought to what you might do with the furniture, and the rest?"  
  
"I...suppose that would go to you and Rajjar, to decide between the two of you what you want," I replied.  Bloody hell, but felt even _more_ morbid to divide up my father's possessions in person than it had felt to complete the impersonal, bureaucratic paperwork to bring it all under my name.  
  
"That's most thoughtful of you, Tarssus."  Kenosa's smile quickly faded, though.  "But before then, I suppose you'd best have a look to see if there is anything of Serren's that you might want to keep to remember him by."  
  
The sad truth of it was, I couldn't imagine Father having that much truly unique to himself short of the clothes he had worn--the art of acquisition still did not come easily even to me, even with ship's quarters _and_ an official office and study on Dromund Kaas to fill.  Something told me it hadn't come naturally to Father, either.  Still, if there was one thing that leading the Sphere of Ancient Knowledge taught, it was the value of a society's tangible reminders of the past.  How much _more_ so, for the individual.  "I suppose I shall," I replied, half to myself, at once more keenly aware of that sense I'd caught hold of through the Force when I'd first approached the house --the one that told of someone parting ways with the world in which we mortals moved.  
  
"There's something I think you ought to see first," Kenosa said as she led Talos and me towards a door on the other side of the main room.  "It's in the bedroom.  It meant a great deal to him."  
  
I almost asked Aunt Keena to tell us what it might be.  But before I could, she opened the door.  And the instant I laid eyes on the room, I could not suppress a gasp: I immediately knew.  
  
I heard Talos' voice next to me as _he_ sought to process the utterly surreal sight.  "What--by all the stars!  Is that...?"  
  
Sitting upon the nightstand at the bedside--no, _standing_ , to be precise, at a height of some thirty centimeters, was _me_.  Or at least, myself as I would appear were I to shed the grey cloak I currently wore over my robes.  This wasn't a holo, or a two-dimensional photo...no, the words for what this truly was were almost too absurd to hold within my mind at first.  There, clad in a replica of my own robes, precisely detailed down to every layer, with a scale model of my ancestral saber hanging from the belt, gazing across the room with a tiny, pyramidal crimson and gold holocron hovering in the air above its outstretched hand, presumably by the power of magnetism, stood...  
  
An action figure.  Of _me_  It even wore a finely detailed silver diadem that poked out from underneath its sculpted mane of black hair.  
  
Under any other circumstances, I would have hardly known whether to laugh out loud, or slink from the room in absolute mortification, at this sight so completely and utterly _bizarre_ in every possible way.  A toy.  Someone had fashioned a _toy_ in _my_ likeness, presumably intended for children all across the Sith Empire to collect, or even to play with.  I hardly knew what to make of the concept.  I, who as a child had never owned a toy more refined than a ball, or a stuffed tooka doll sewn from discarded socks, now had a sophisticated doppelganger in the form of an action figure?  
  
But that wasn't the heart of it now.  That wasn't the heart of it at all.  
  
This...was what Father had chosen to remember _me_ by.  In his last weeks, when I had just ascended to the Dark Council and he already lay ill in his sickbed, he must have sent for this.  For _something_ to remind him of his absent son, the boy that he had still believed, even then, would eventually come home.  Someone had posed it to where it would have seemed from Father's vantage point as if the figure were inviting him to draw close, offering the holocron to him ( _much as I had offered a holocron much like that to my beloved Ashara_ ).  
  
"I'm so sorry," I murmured to myself on a trembling breath, feeling the remnants of my father's final presence in the room all the more acutely.  With that tiny figure, offering its gift towards an empty space, the sensation was inescapable.  "I didn't mean to abandon you.  I never forgot--I never forgot you, I never stopped loving you..."  
  
I sank down to my knees as the tears began to flow down my cheeks.  "I came back, Father.  I'm here now," I whispered as though it were part of a ritual chant by which I might somehow invoke the Force to make things right.  "I'm here now, Father...I'm here now..."  
  
As the weeping overcame me, I felt a weight settle upon each of my shoulders: one hand on each side, the one whom I called aunt on the left, and the one whom I called brother on the right.  
  
  
The _Fury_ skimmed just above the surface of the desert as the sun of Dromund Fels worked its way down towards the horizon.  Bands of color wrapped their way across the sky, soon to give way to the absolute and unyielding night.  Revel had struck the ship's running lights at my command; the transport moved across the land a lightless silhouette against the fading twilight...for stealth, for privacy, yes--but more than that, for remembrance.  And mourning.  
  
As for myself, I stood alone, not on the _Fury_ 's bridge, but within its cargo hold.  Even 2V-R8 I had sent away.  I had hoped, what seemed like an eternity ago, to bring my father aboard the _Fury_ , to finally let him feel what it meant to slip the bonds of gravity and soar above the soil, not a bound slave being shipped from one estate to another, but a free man with the right to name his own destination.  
  
Now...Father lay at rest aboard the _Fury_ , utterly, completely still.  His eyes were closed, his arms crossed over his chest.  Only removed from stasis minutes ago, it seemed as if the life had only barely left him.  His features were gaunt from the ravages of the cancer, his hair thinned and greyed, his cheekbones drawn far sharper now than my own, every line etched deeper into his weathered face than I remembered.  I had been the taller of us two for a long time, but never had he seemed so _small_ as he did now, in his final repose.  I laid my hand across his motionless chest, its paleness contrasted against the black tunic in which the funeral director had dressed him.  My eyes flicked once more to Father's face.  Only death had brought a pallor that matched my own--the color he should have had, if not for the decades spent outside beneath the brutal midday sun that had ultimately taken their fatal toll.  
  
His eyes, unlike mine, had been a deep and gentle brown.  And I would never see them opened again.  
  
Father's body lay upon a funerary litter, a device consisting of a woven tapestry suspended across two iron poles, which would be borne by four of us to the site of his final rites.  For the tapestry I had chosen a banner of the Sith Order, its black starburst upon a field of maroon that faded into darkness at its corners.  True, Father had not been Sith, some might have objected...but I owed so much to him for the Sith Lord I had become that to do any less felt unworthy of him.  
  
Sometimes it had felt over the last several days as though I moved about through shadow, none of it quite real.  Now the inexorable weight of it all pressed down upon me.  This was the final hello.  This was the final goodbye.  The ship settled once more to the earth.  Soon the stillness would break.  Soon I would not be alone.  Soon...I would commend his soul to that which lay beyond.    
  
One can know the truth--feel it in his bones.  He can tell himself that he accepts this, that he will be ready.  He can tell himself that death is merely a part of life and thus no different from any other moment.  But he who claims this only deceives himself.  If we love, we mourn.  The only way to destroy the one is to extinguish the other.  Even for one who Force-walks between worlds, for whom his own passage brings no fear...there is no evading the pain when others--when precious ones--traverse the path before him and he is made to wait behind for unnumbered days or years before he can touch more than air.  
  
Father had gone before me.  And I would see him to his rest.  
  
The inner door to the cargo hold slid open.  Ashara entered first, followed by Talos, Xalek, and 2V-R8.  Andronikos held up the rear.  Khem Val was nowhere to be seen.  That suited the both of us.  
  
Ashara and I took up our places at the front of the funerary litter--at Father's head--Ashara at the left, and me at the right.  Xalek assumed a place behind Ashara, Talos at my back.  
  
"It's time," I ordered.  
  
With that, Andronikos keyed the command on the console at the back of the cargo hold, and the main door yawned open, loading ramp extending down at a gentle incline to the ground below.  His voice rumbled low, strangely subdued.  "I'm real sorry, boss.  If you need me...you know where to call."  
  
" _My lord?_ "  2V this time.  His mechanical voice rang softly, tremulously, almost as it had been when I first met him--except something was different.  This was not fear.  Or if it was...this was _not_ mortal terror.  No longer.  This was something else.  Though I didn't turn to look, I nodded, and that was enough for him.  " _May the Maker be with you._ "  
  
That was the first time I had ever heard the droid-- _any_ droid, I realized--extend the blessings of his Maker to an organic.  I forced myself to steady my breath.  I wasn't ready to weep again--not now, anyway.  "Thank you, 2V," I managed hoarsely.  "Thank you very much.  Both of you."  
  
After another moment of silence, I gave my fellow pallbearers the command.  We lifted the litter in unison, to the height that we could each bear comfortably.  I felt Ashara, who stood shortest of the four of us, bring a subtle touch of the Force to bear--but only just enough.  Not enough to make the task before us effortless.  This was as it should be.  From there we descended to the soil of Dromund Fels, into the wilderness far beyond any city lights.  Once we cleared the cargo ramp of the _Fury_ , Andronikos withdrew the ramp and the hatch sealed shut.  Here he would wait in stillness and darkness for our return.  
  
After a moment for our eyes to adjust to the darkening twilight, I gave the second command, and we began the silent procession.  Here in the desert wilds, the wind and monsoon rains had carved strange and wondrous formations into the rock...including an outcropping that dropped off from just below waist height down to where we were standing.  That was our destination.  
  
Stands of sajjen-scrub clung to life out here, perhaps sustained in the dry season by an underground spring.  I even caught sight of the silhouetted forms of a few scraggly bushes--monsoon-rose, dormant now, waiting for the rains.  The only scents were of the dust, and the faintest trace of moisture that promised the eventual deliverance from the trials of the dry season.  The sky stretched limitless above us, now turned fully to night.  There was no moon above us on this night, but in the utter darkness away from any trace of civilization, I beheld the faintest ripples in the vastness between the stars: traces, albeit nearly invisible to the human eye, of the gaseous bands of the Stygian Caldera, the nebula that cordoned off the inner worlds of the Sith from the rest of the galaxy.  
  
"Here," I ordered, as we approached the outcropping.  Together we lowered the litter that bore my father's body to the ground.  
  
I turned then to Xalek, who wore his formal, armored robes in charcoal and crimson, and gave the ceremonial command.  "Attend us."  
  
The Kaleesh apprentice turned honor guard smartly bowed, then withdrew from the rest of us, assuming a position some thirty meters behind us, on the lookout for any who might disturb the sanctity of this hallowed moment.  
  
Three of us remained behind, gathered before Father's still form.  Ashara and I wore our Sith robes, no longer hidden beneath a cloak.  There were no disguises here.  I would not hide what I was...nor would I ask Ashara to hide anything of what she was: Togruta, beloved.  As for Talos, he wore a resplendent tunic of autumnal, garnet red--the same one that he wore before the highest officials of the Sphere of Ancient Knowledge and the Dark Council itself, that signaled that this man, among those who did not wield the Force, was the honored personal advisor to one of the twelve of the Council.  And in my eyes, even if not theirs, deserving of the same favor.  
  
The three of us had found dishearteningly little, when we plied the historical records, in terms of Sith funerary rites for an ancestor truly and unreservedly beloved of those who remained.  Too often the succession of one generation over the other was marked among us by enmity and envy, the desire to erase that which came before in favor of that which arose in its place.  And too often those who had never wielded the Force were left to obscurity, not even considered worthy of desecration in the end, let alone a final devotion.  Not so for me.  Not so for Father.  
  
I had ultimately settled upon a variant of an ancient death ritual from the days before the Jen'jidai arrived on Korriban to found their Empire.  In the days of the ancestors of the modern Sith Purebloods, there had been no distinction between the rites for those born with the Force and those without, for nearly without exception, every child born of the blood of the Sith had the ability.  Those that did not were mercilessly exposed to the elements to die.  That this would have been the fate of my father in those days, that his existence to maturity would have scandalized the ancient ones, I cared not.  That I would give him an honor no less than any Sith Lord, ancient or modern, would receive--that was my only concern.  
  
" _Drajunaskutnuyak, nulijayiv'jaarvek...mes, kuris gedulimas_ ," I began in the ancient tongue of the Sith.  " _Zhelosa nu qukutottoi_."  
  
_My family, beloved by Father...we who are mourning.  I welcome you._  
  
" _Zhelosa mes, quyottoi su'usjiso_ ," Ashara and Talos replied in turn.  
  
_We bid welcome to you, his son._  
  
With that I switched into Basic, for my shaky command of the ancient tongue could never hope to carry the weight of everything I had to say.  Some things I had been able to memorize for the ritual.  Other things...I needed the freedom to speak my heart.   As I did now.  "We have come to honor the life of my father, Serren Ostelin-Kallig.  He was the man who gave me the chance to live again, who pulled me back into this world the first time that death ever took me.  He was the man who raised me, who found so much to give to me even when he had almost nothing.  He was the one who instilled in me my first sense of being something more than chattel.  I was _from_ him... _of_ him, yes, but he always made it clear that I stood _with_ him, as something more than simply a thing to command.  
  
"And he did all of this for me..."  My throat started to close up.  My voice broke despite myself, so I drew a long breath in through my nose and started again.  "He did all of this for me even though my birth had cost the life of his wife...my mother.  I never knew her, but he made sure through the stories he told me, and the love he showed me, that I knew something of the love she'd had when she carried me.  And just the same...I know that neither of you had the chance to know Father when he was alive.  But I like to hope that even if just a little, perhaps you may have come to know something of who he was, through me,"  The faintest of smiles slipped across my lips.  "If I manage to succeed in that, then I will have done Father at least some of the honor that he is due."  
  
Slowly I withdrew the ceremonial _chaisqât_ knife from my belt, holding it before me for Ashara and Talos to see.  The ancient Sith would have been disgusted to hear me speak the words I was about to speak.  But I felt the necessity far too deep in my heart to do otherwise.  "The ancient Sith had two variants of this ritual--this is the one that shows respect to the person who has passed.  Still...what I do now, I do not require of either of you.  I won't think any less of you if you decline.  The fact that you came here with me is enough."  
  
I turned my back to my beloved and my brother, tuned out the sounds of the world around me as much as I could, as I walked forward towards the place where Father lay.  It was not for me to see whether Ashara or Talos would follow.  That decision was theirs, and theirs alone, to make.  
  
Keeping my eyes straight before me, I raised my _chaisqât_ up to the sky, bathing the edge of the silver blade in starlight.  Holding the ceremonial knife in that position, I began to recite the words of the rite in their Basic translation, lest I mangle this hallowed liturgy.  "I have come before the stars and the sky, before the power of the Force, to give thanks for that blood and spirit which was given to me, that which I have taken to shape my life, to command the Force, and conquer my destiny.  I give thanks for every sacrifice made by my father, Serren Ostelin-Kallig, in which he yielded that which he held precious to become my strength instead."    
  
In that moment, as I reached the critical phase of the rite, I became aware of a warmth surrounding me in the coolness of the desert air.  And I knew then that I was not alone.  "We who call Serren Ostelin-Kallig 'Father'--"  I finally allowed myself to take stock of those who stood beside me.  Both of them had raised their own _chaisqât_ high.  So there would be three of us together.  I nodded once in gratitude, making ready to invoke our ritual names.  I held out my left hand, palm up.  "Tarssus Kallig...Ashara Zavros-Kallig...Talos Drellik-Kallig--we have come to return to him a portion of that which we were given, once and for all time."  
  
I brought down the knife, slashed the edge of the blade in one swift movement across the surface of my palm, allowed the blood to drip down onto the blade.  This was much as I had done when I swore the blood-agreements to bind the three spirits that followed Lord Ergast.  This too sealed a promise--but this one was so much more.  This one was to love, and to remember.  
  
I caught a glimpse of Ashara's face out the corner of her eye--and just as quickly, I turned away.  I knew how barbaric the ritual must appear to her, with its bloodshed I was sure the Jedi forbade.  At least to me, this was not a revelry in the pain, nor an attempt to carve out the grief by means of this wound.  It was up to her to decide the meaning, and what she would do.  
  
My Togruta beloved's hesitation lasted only five seconds or so.  I knew when I heard a swish through the air, and a muffled hiss of indrawn breath.  I still did not turn to look--but I broke with ritual for a moment, and carefully, so as not to let the final trickle of blood from my palm run onto her robes, I set the fingertips of my left hand upon her shoulder and bowed my head.  
  
Then, his features stony, unflinching as the Sith of old, my brother brought his _chaisqât_ down and across his palm, then followed my own motions, tilting his hand and allowing the blood to run out onto the blade.  
  
In the oldest days, long before the Sith had known of the worlds beyond their own skies, a single _chaisqât_ would have been used for the task.  Primitive though they had seemed to their _Jen'jidai_ conquerors, however, the ancient species had not been stupid.  Far from it.  Even by the day when Ajunta Pall slew their final king, Haukagrim Graush, and elevated the _Jen'jidai_ to become the first foreign-born Lords of the Sith, they had known better than to willingly take the blood of another into their wounds.  Instead, they did as we did now.  I held my ceremonial knife before me, where first Ashara and then Talos scraped their blades across the edge of my own, and there joined our blood together into one as family, the dark yielding up no hint of whose was whose.  
  
They did not follow me for what came next, though.  This role was mine alone to fulfill.  
  
For the funeral of an enemy kinsman by this rite, there would have been no blood drawn by mourning loved ones.  What would follow would be a final act of conquest and desecration--the _chaisqât_ knife plunged hilt deep into the heart of the defeated, the blood wiped off on the sleeve of the triumphant.  What _I_ would do was not that.  Not in the slightest.  It was difficult, yes--but this was an act of honor and gratitude.  
  
I reached out with my left hand, and careful to position my wounded palm well clear of anything that could seep inside, I took the left hand of my father and gently positioned it until it rested palm up in my own.  The ancient Sith would have scolded me for the tears that sprang to the corners of my eyes, to take this hand that had once been so strong, so warm, and feel it chilled, frail, and lifeless.  I did not care for their judgment.  I closed my eyes for a moment, drew in a shuddering breath, let these tears fall, one tracing down each cheek.  
  
Momentarily steadied, I raised my _chaisqât_ once more...and this time, I rested the tip against Father's palm.  One more pause.  Then I drew the ceremonial knife across my father's palm, creating a mark identical to the one on my own.  There was no bleeding; so long as I held the incision upright, there was no motive force from the heart to push the blood out of the body.  Nor was that the purpose of this.  Instead, I rested the _chaisqât_ within the incision and let Ashara's, Talos', and my blood run down the blade and back to the source.  " _Dazek nu quyottoi, Jaarveknuyak_ ," I whispered: _I thank you, my Father._  What had begun with him...I had returned.  Then I folded his fingers to form a fist, and gently slipped his left hand back on his chest, beneath his right, as if he were clasping an amulet.  
  
With that, I stepped back to where Ashara and Talos waited, then knelt and drove my _chaisqât_ hilt deep into the dust and earth where it would remain for the time being.  
  
This last part of the funeral rite, the Sith had nearly ceased to do since the arrival of the _Jen'jidai_.  And I understood why: on the surface, it might seem to bear some resemblance to the Jedi ceremony, which regarded the body as nothing, and the spirit dispersed into namelessness within the Force.  The _Jen'jidai_ had disdained that.   _I_ disdained that.  I believed wholeheartedly in the continuance of the self into the beyond, and even more, I treasured the hints given to me by Lord Aloysius that this extended not just to those who were strong in the Force, but to all who were filled with the fullness of life itself.  
  
But this was _not_ truly the same.  And for me, this was the only route I could have chosen, for I would not have some misguided relic-seeking opportunist thinking he could make talismans out of what Father had left behind.  No--I would protect him to the last.  Even in this.  
  
I turned my focus upon Ashara.  "Are you ready?"  
  
My beloved nodded, solemn and resolute.  Her Force would be essential for what came next.  
  
I looked next to Talos.  "Will you support her?"  
  
My brother bowed, then set his hand upon Ashara's shoulder.  He might not hold power over the Force himself, but his steady bearing would give her--and me--strength.  
  
With that, I laid my hand on Ashara's other shoulder, my signal to begin.  Ashara reached out with the Force.  Father's body slowly rose off the funerary litter and into the cool night air.  How deeply this sight grieved me--but this time I did not restrain the silent tears that began to flow, as the first arcs of lightning wrapped their way in deepest blue around my body.  I could not help but remember, as I raised my hands towards the sky, that it was this--my first unknowing burst of Force lightning--that had brought the Sith to tear me away from Father.  Now, by lightning, I commended his spirit unto the stars, and that which lay beyond them.  
  
With a stricken cry, I loosed the wild Force-energy upon its target, now suspended a hundred meters above us.  The lightning wrapped itself around and within my father's body.  Ashara tightened her Force grip, and as I wept freely now, I continued to pour my lightning forth, where it generated temperatures that did their work far more quickly and thoroughly than any Jedi funeral pyre could ever do.  It wasn't long until what the lightning touched had lost all semblance of its prior form and held tightly together--just barely now--by Ashara's telekinesis, what remained was now a seething, shining orb of bottled flame.  
  
Now I ceased the flow of lightning.  I joined my own telekinesis with Ashara's, pushing the glowing orb higher and higher above the desert land, fighting with all my might to hold it tight until--  
  
With a deafening _crack_ , the fiery orb exploded forth in less than an instant, into a brilliant starburst that lit the arid landscape like a magnesium flare, then faded as the ashes, too fine to fall back to the ground, cooled and drifted forever away upon the night wind.  
  
I lifted my arms wide, spread open to the sky, and I cried out in Sith once more.  
  
" _Zutiyatul vik'dytjontû, Jaarveknuyak...zyurdarvaloksh nu qûrât_!"  
  
With that, I knelt and withdrew the ceremonial blade from the ground.  I tucked the _chaisqât_ back in my belt.  Together, Ashara, Talos, and I took up the empty funerary litter between us and began the walk back to the _Fury_.  
  
Though we made the trek in silence, the meaning behind my final words resounded deep within my soul, the truth to which I would forever cling until forever fully became the whole of who we were.  
  
_Go thou truly with honor, my Father...I shall see you again!_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Soundtrack:** ["The Heat"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aLyq-JsAyo) by Peter Gabriel, and ["Trace of Gravity"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJXNLjGjNAw) by Mark Petrie
> 
>  
> 
>  **Note:** Yes, I bodged together the Sith dialogue from multiple sources, including some of the grammatical stuff mentioned on [Wookieepedia](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Sith_\(language\)), additional non-canon vocabulary from [Codex Ulgo](http://www.codexulgo.org/content/568), and certain things, like the _chaisqât_ (and my own words for "you" singular and plural (I wasn't pleased with the Codex Ulgo using the entirely too coincidental " _tu_ " as if Sith were Spanish, Italian, or French) which are entirely of my own invention. While the grammar on Wookieepedia is incomplete and thus I was left with certain tenses and cases that I couldn't represent (verb forms are largely nonexistent), I am at least proud that I was able to create phrases that are not a straight-up cipher of the English language.
> 
> Also, the Sith death ritual is entirely of my own invention. Please note that I do not believe in bloodletting in real life. Tarssus, much like C.S. Lewis' character of Emeth, is trying to express something deeper, in the terms that he knows.


End file.
